TAST Week Forty-Two: Fern Stitch

This week's stitch for the TAST Challenge hosted by Sharon Boggon at Pin Tangle  is stitch forty-two, Fern stitch.  It is a really pretty and versatile little stitch and Sharon has posted a step by step tutorial of how to work it here.

As you may know, I finished filling in the last box on my previous sampler with last week's stitch and made a little picture from it which is now proudly hanging in my sewing room. That meant that I needed to start a new sampler for this week's stitch. The new sampler will probably also be stretched over a canvas and made into a picture. That way I will have a pair of stitched sampler pictures which will complement each other.

The sampler I recently completed was made up of a series of boxes and the new sampler is going to be made up of a series of circular designs.  I thought this would be a nice change but at the same time similar to the previous sampler. Here you can see my first circle stitched using fern stitch in variegated silk thread.

Fern stitch is not a new stitch to me and I like using it.  In fact, I have used it quite a lot including some of my earlier quilts such as on this table topper that I made a few years (too many to count!) ago...

and in the cable stitched onto this quilt also....

I have also used it much more recently in some of my little embroidered pictures....

and also in my crazy quilt blocks....

It is a very useful stitch to be able to use and in another of  Sharon's tutorials you can see it stitched with the addition of beads which is very pretty.