As the students and I went through the monthly block assignments for the Chicken Scratch embroidery, Gridline Block of the Month quilt–month by month–I decided to stitch up a brand new sample in a totally different gingham color way. I had recently stocked my online shop with a Robert Kaufman Essex Cotton/Linen fabric in new colorways, including a dark and moody black and gray colorway called “Licorice” (sadly, they are no longer making this gingham, but at the time of writing this, I still have a bolt of it available.) A version in this gingham would most definitely look very different than the first Gridline sample, which was stitched on a gray and white gingham.
This quilt is stitched, assembled, finished, and photographed and I could not be happier at how it turned out!
When I designed the Gridline quilt, I intentionally had it in the lessons to stitch each Chicken Scratch pattern 2 times. Meaning, each month, you would get a new block/Chicken Scratch motif assignment, and you had the opportunity to play with different colorways and placements on the gingham. This was what I have learned really makes Chicken Scratch embroidery fun for my students–the opportunity to experiment with all kinds of embroidery floss (and such a low cost craft supply too!)
It was around the time I began stitching this new sample along with my students that I fell down the delightful rabbit hole of hand dyed embroidery floss. Oh my gosh, so pretty! I already new I loved variegated thread (and have lots of it in my shop), but I had never played around with hand dyed floss. I ordered a few skeins from my favorite sellers on Etsy and immediately fell in love!
The difference between variegated and hand dyed floss
When you select a variegated embroidery floss, as you stitch you will begin to see a pattern of color changes. Some variegated floss has short color changes, some has longer ones. This means if you are stitching a large area, you will either see more or less frequent color changes as you stitch, depending on which you choose.
When you stitch with a hand dyed embroidery floss, there is no discernible or predictable repeating color change. The color is randomly put on the floss when it is dyed, so the results you get can be wildly different than a machine dyed, variegated floss. I am honestly not sure if there is a type of embroidery that hand dyed floss is made for specifically (it would be great if you were embroidering a landscape or sky, for example) but it is beautiful when used in Chicken Scratch embroidery. Maybe it is the combination of a structured embroidery pattern like you have in Chicken Scratch embroidery, combined with the randomness of hand dyed floss. The results are unique and beautiful to me. And on this dark colored gingham, the floss seems to just “glisten”.
Two Etsy shops I can recommend for their hand dyed floss-
For this new sample, I oriented the blocks differently (because there are lots of ways to orient these blocks!) and used the same Liberty of London print for the cornerstones. The gray sashing strips are an oxford cloth shirting fabric I found at Mood (online).
I am uploading all images of the new sample up inside the Block of the Month classroom now. If you are interested in taking the Gridline Block of the Month online class, it is available to start anytime! I’m trying something new with this class. Instead of “dripping” out the monthly lessons every 30 days, when you purchase the class you have immediate access to all of the lessons right away! So you can choose your own pace. Go month by month or have a full on Chicken Scratch embroidery week and get them all done at once!
