Continuing with my challenges,  it is time to start my embroidery for the month. Like my Granny Square project, it is evolving a life of its own.

I decided,  for the lack of any other inspiration, to do my left hand. My thinking is now about how I could use this theme and record my children and grand children’s hands – maybe, maybe not.

Meanwhile, I have decided to explore the varied straight/braided varieties of embroidering lines. I have also decided to try out some variegated floss that I picked up some time ago on a retail therapy binge. I am enjoying the results.

The outline of my hand is in heavy chain stitch from this Mary Corbet YouTube video here.

The left-most line on the pinky is in Hungarian braided chain stitch, again from Mary Corbet here.

The left-most line on the ring finger is labelled simply braid stitch by Shagufta Fyms, here. She is not speaking English but that does not stop me from following her tutorial – actions speak louder than words.

The middle finger has raised buttonhole band as demonstrated by Mary Corbet here. Mary has a very clear way of demonstrating stitches that keeps me coming back to her site.

The index finger has braid stitch or cable plait stitch as demonstrated by Mary Corbet here. The interesting thing about this is that it is so similar to the braid stitch demonstrated by Shagufta Fyms that until I had actually sewn a number of stitches I thought they were the same. The difference between them is that the braid stitch is like a twisted chain and the cable plait is like a plain chain. Of course, I’m guessing that I have mistaken the two sets of instructions and they are actually the same stitch worked in a different fashion.

Looking for a different artist (don’t really know why) the thumb is done in VanDyke stitch. Another non-English video with perfectly obvious visual guides, Vijaya’s Art is here.
There is more to do but that will be for another installment. Here is my February embroidery so far.