TAST week three's feather stitch

this post probably looks a bit out of season. i'm ashamed to say that our family's christmas stockings are badly in need of replacement. the reason i'm ashamed to say it is because i make and embellish stockings every single year . . . just not for my own closest family members. shame on me~!
this year i decided that the time had come to get down to business with the family's new stockings and even still i only got the fronts/bases cut late on christmas eve. i had to hang them by a safety pin for christmas morning display. how very sad is that~!

so slowly but surely the "light" went from pretty damn dim to about as bright as it gets (really not very) and i decided i should use Take A Stitch Tuesday as a working format for getting these stockings embellished. what you see above is feather stitching which is this weeks (3) stitch. i decided to let a white thread and a burgundy thread P L A Y together and this is what happened.

you can also see that i have couched down a tatted snowflake using tiny fly stitches (from week 1) around the edge. i carefully picked a thread of similar weight and kept them relatively regular as they went around which resulted in some tiny (additional) snowflake symmetry. it worked very well.

this is part of the toe of the stocking. i worked a fly stitch (week 1) along a seam and added a pearly white bead to the tail part of the stitch.
the wandery stitching in the variegated thread that you see below that is a buttonhole stitch (week 2) that morphs into a feather stitch (week 3) and then back again.
i think the buttonhole stitch got a bit cheated here so i'll probably be thinking of other places within the stocking that i can work it in.
there will be a total of 3 stockings in this project. i won't show the whole stocking/s until i have each of them stitched, lined and finished. i think this should keep me nicely involved with TAST as well as fulfilling a project that (finally) deserves it's turn. i anticipate being able to hang these lovely finished pieces next christmas season. and i won't be waiting until late on christmas eve to do it~! i hope.

this last photo is some covered fabric buttons that i've made. i wanted to see how stitching on them might work . . . and added feather stitch (in one form or another) to each one of them. they are the same size as a nickel. they are a bit fiddly but great fun to make and i anticipate using them within the stockings as well as on other pieces that i work up.

today's gifts include:

• a warm fire and stitching time in front of it
• a friendly dog at my feet
• needles and thread aplenty