TAST Week Thirty-four: Oyster Stitch

This week's new stitch for the TAST Challenge hosted by Sharon Boggon at Pin Tangle is stitch thirty-four, Oyster stitch. I had never heard of this stitch before and, at first glance at the tutorial about it, I thought it was going to be a difficult stitch to learn. However, it is a member of the chain stitch family (which I love) and it didn't take me long to get to grips with it.

Some of the photographs of examples of this stitch were beautiful and I particularly liked the flowers that Sharon had created, so I thought I would create my own flower using the stitch. I chose one of the smaller boxes on my sampler and drew a small circle in the middle of the box.  I then added oyster stitches in a ring around the circle.  I finished off the flower by filling the centre with yellow colonial knots. (Now that I have seen the closer photographs I think I may need to add a couple more knots!!)

The oyster stitches were stitched using two strands of variegated cotton embroidery floss. The colonial knots were stitched using two strands of yellow cotton embroidery floss and the perimeter of the box was stitched using two strands of blue cotton embroidery floss and the stem stitch.

I think this is my favourite stitch to date and it will definitely be making an appearance in a future project!