Old Eastern stitches

TAST stitch 99 is Eastern stitch. TAST stands for Take A Stitch Tuesday, 
an embroidery challenge at Pin Tangle.

Eastern stitch is a lovely canvas stitch, but it’s also a nice stitch to experiment with. The first examples are part of my TAST 2010 sampler. I started my sampler with a normal Eastern stitch filling in Stef Francis perle 5.

The Eastern stitch reminded me of Chinese characters. I changed the second part of the stitch to make it look like that. The thread is perle 5.

Then I stitched the previous variation in a row from left to right. I only made the foundation bars at the first stitch. For the next stitches I used the second part of the previous stitch as foundation bars. I’m not sure if you can still call it Eastern stitch, but I like this variation. The threads are perle 8 and 5.

Another try to make the Eastern stitch look like Chinese characters. I played with the tension of the perle 12 thread.

Here I made 2 squares of Eastern stitches like the one in the second sample. 
The top  square is done in perle 8 and has detached chain stitches in the centre. The bottom one is done in perle 12 and has an Algerian eye in the centre.

A combo of Eastern stitch, Siennese stitch, chained cross stitch and French knots. I stitched the Eastern stitch in 2 different colours, blue for the foundation and red for the bow. There's a French knot in the centre, chained cross stitches in the corners and Siennese stitches at the 4 sides. I decorated it with small bugle beads. The threads are perle 5.

This last experiment on my TAST 2010 sampler is done in Caron Watercolours. Just 4 stitches in a square with 2 mm beads tucked between the stitches. You can take a closer look at my TAST 2010 sampler here.

My last sample of the Eastern stitch is a progress photo of my embroidery Nefertiti. At the bottom half I stitched Eastern stitches in different threads and sizes.

There are more old samples of Eastern stitches from other participants in the Flickr TAST group.