Self-Couching Fill Stitches

You read that correctly...S E L F - C O U C H I N G. I know, right.

I am in a blog hop called "Stitch Me Up" happening march 20th. It's embroidery!!!!!!
They gave us several patterns to choose from and we are to have some fun with it. 
So far, I totally am. 

I have a pretty good sized area I need to fill with color....bright color...solidly..to cover a patterned background fabric. All I knew to do was a good ol' satin stitch or maybe a split stitch. Weeeelllll I didn't want it to look like a cable knit sweater, so I meandered over to this amazing site by Mary Corbet: http://www.needlenthread.com/  I looked through her video library and found a couple of stitches that might do the trick so I gave them a whirl........

Needless to say, mine aren't as fab as her's, but they aren't too bad.

I prepped a hoop

the designs are 1.5 inches wide

the light pink is size 8 perle cotton

dark pink, 3 strands of dmc floss

 This is the first one

pretty subtle, pretty smooth

This one, I think, is supposed to run vertical and kind of looks like a double romanian.

I wasn't as smooth with this one. lol

I've only seen it in wool so far.

I wasn't so smooth with this one either, but it makes a lovely pattern with the couching.

Group Shot

You can see the subtle differences in the stitches in the group shot.  
They all use the same basic technique. The couching stitch length is what changes. They go pretty fast too.  FYI......thread hogs..... big time!

Not sure which stitch I am going to use yet, but I am leaning toward one of them. You'll just have to wait to see which one it is.

Try a new stitch today!!  I really, R E A L L Y, need to make a sampler!