Come Stitch with Me! – Celebrate Sampler “R”

Updated May 31, 2022.
The R block in our sampler uses a lower case letter in Tempo 21 from Tink’s Alphabets Eclectic and Interesting, charted below. It’s a simple alphabet, similar to Times, so it’s nice amid all the fancier letters.

Because this letter leaves lots of open space in the block, I wanted to use a stitch which had a strong pattern and took a little while to develop. Diagonal Milanese (charted below) is great that way. It has a strong diagonal direction because of the arrowheads all pointing along the same diagonal. It also has a wonderful rhythm because of the alternating and interlocking direction of each line.

Begin stitching in the upper left corner of the block. Make the establishing row of this stitch with arrowheads pointing up from this corner down. I’m terrible at counting so I only stitched to the letter. I made the background along the left side of the letter, under it and then back up the other side. For me this is far more reliable than attempting to count.

This stitch brings up the question of picking the right stitch for an area. It isn’t a particularly large stitch, but to me it feels big. Although you should pick stitches where a minimum of three repeats of the stitch can be found in each direction, that is probably a marginal size for this stitch. Those diagonal lines can be hard to discern in a smaller space. I only use Milanese when I can have five repeats along at least one line.

Here’s a rundown of the sampler so far:

• Marking the canvas
• C
• E
• L
• E
• B
• R