Feather stitch is a fun embroidery stitch that has the look of branches and is a great base for other embellishments like beading, French knots and lazy daisies. At first this stitch can seem a little confusing, but it's really quite easy once you understand what you're doing.
The vine is worked from top to bottom on a piece of knit fabric. To begin you'll need your knit project, a long piece of yarn to stitch with and a yarn needle.
Thread the needle and tie a knot in the end of the yarn, if desired. Decide which part of your work is the top, if there could be any confusion.
Insert the yarn needle into the knitting from back to front near the top of the work. Bring the needle back down about parallel to the starting point, off to the right a bit (the farther away, the bigger your stitch).
But instead of pulling the needle and thread all the way through at this point, slide the needle back to the front a little down from where you are and in between the two points where the needle has already been. Make sure the working yarn gets caught under the needle to tack the stitch in place.
To make the second stitch, move parallel and to the left of the point where you are and do the same action, bringing the needle down through the work and then back up at a midpoint between and below the two parallel points.
Continue in this manner, switching left to right as you go, all the way down the knitting, or as long as you want.
Feather stitch is a lot of fun to embellish. You can add a single bead to each branch, put a French knot at the end or sprinkle in some lazy daisies or even single petal stitches.
