Playing with Chickenscratch

I had a gingham patch on my Tea Therapy block so I decided to play around with Chickenscratch. I have seen examples of chickenscratch around the net over the past several years and always wanted to give a try. I should have used the same thread for the o's as I did for the crosses but that's what experimenting is for, right?

It turns out that I even had an example of chickenscratch in my vintage linens collection and didn't know it.



I love how these simple stitches can transform the whole look of a piece of gingham. The actual gingham on this piece is red and white but all the stitching makes the pillow cover appear a soft pink.

Linda B of Chloe's Place has an entire Flickr set of Chickenscratch examples to delight your eye. I love this one where she applied chickenscratch to a piece of denim...

And I love this little house that she credits to Margaret J in the Quilts of Unity...

Amy of Angry Chicken runs a regular apron challenge called Tie One On whose theme for August is Gingham. Needless to say, there has been much chickenscratch discussion as a result. Aprons are due by September 1 so you can check back on the Tie One On site then to see pics of all the aprons that are entered. There is bound to be a lot of chickenscratch...

Photo courtesy of Angry Chicken

Mary Corbet of Needle 'N' Thread has a post on chickenscratch and Feeling Stitchy also has a good post on chickenscratch as well as many others which I don't have time to mention...Now that I've tried a bit of it, I can see where it would be fun to sit and play around with it for a while.

Here's some good basic instructions if you want to try it. Now don't count your chickens before they scratch...