Jochet Works

Most Chicken Scratch Embroidery (a.k.a Gingham Embroidery) involves using white thread on a colored (often red) gingham cotton fabric. I decided to take a regular cotton shirt and add some nice butterflies and flowers to it. But I wanted them to pop a little more.

This is a more traditional Chicken Scratch look. The embroidery works to accentuate certain colors and make them stand out over others.

I really like how the purple ended up looking against the light blue of the shirt, but the yellow looks faint from farther away. Also, added the flower circle a little lower than I meant to, and I really didn’t have the patience to go and rip out all the stitching just to move it upwards.

The patterns themselves were fairly simple, the hardest part was deciding which block to start on, because it would change what the accentuated color would be for the entire pattern. For example, when you look at the butterfly, the yellow of the wings helps to lighten up the blue and draw out more of the white squares, causing the wings to look lighter in color than the rest of the shirt. If I had moved the whole butterfly down and over just one square, I would have accented the blue squares by making the white ones seem smaller. Do you see what I mean?

That’s honestly the part I really love about Chicken Scratch as a form of needlepoint. You can do the same pattern twice and have completely different results both times.

I plan to do more Chicken Scratch in the future. If you have any ideas, questions, comments, or concerns, please let me know!

Thanks for reading. -Jo