TAST with Sharon B's Pin Tangle

Week 1: Fly stitch.

I am not an embroiderer so I jumped at the opportunity to get on board with this challenge. I have been playing with this stitch on a temari (and mostly it looks pretty awful) but hey it is a new skill I am hoping to acquire so I'm going to keep practising.

I decided to try the fly stitch as an Obi decoration. My plan is to stitch rows toward the pole with each weekly challenge until I fill up the ball.

At first I stitched east west around the equator using several long stitches followed by sections which were more densely packed, but it looked too awful and reminded me of the jacket that Adam Ant used to wear. I unpicked all of it and stitched again with a north south orientation in a plaited style. The negative space looked like little houses all in a row when I was done so I turned the ball upside down and stitched another row.

I was more happy with how they had turned out but there were large empty diamond shapes along the Obi that just didn't look right so I went back and stitched tiny fly stitches in alternating north and south inside the holes. Of course this worked until I got to the last diamond shape and I had the prospect of two fly upright together or two down together at the last fly stitch so instead of that I made a reversed fly stitch (which turned out more like and x).

I think I am also going to practice these TAST challenges on some scrap fabric in a hoop.  I realise that if I am going to 'traditionally' embroider onto the surface of a temari I need to make my thread wrap tension more firm and dense than usual. I will add more tight extra thread layers on the next temari I use.