I am a huge fan of open stitches, especially for backgrounds.  Open stitches are a way to integrate wonderful stitches without completely obscuring truly beautiful painting, especially skies, by our favorite needlepoint artists.  It also is a tactic to draw the eye to a desired area by downplaying the area the open stitch is covering.  The most understandable example for the second reason are backgrounds.  

Today's stitch is one of my favorite backgrounds.  It's an easy pattern to pick up, fills up an area quickly due to its deceivingly large size, and is evenly spaced.  It's also very easy to determine if you missed a stitch within the the pattern.  I call it Diamond Connections.  

It's also a very appealing combination of vertical and diagonal stitches, which adds a nice texture to the area.  Consider rotating the diagram 90 degrees and having horizontal connectors instead of vertical!  There are no rules here.  The stitched sample on Instagram is from one of Melissa Shirley's recent holiday baskets.

This stitch diagram, along with other #whimsicalwednesday and #smallspacesunday stitch diagrams, can also be found on www.pinterest.com/whimsicalstitch/whimsicalwednesday.  

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If you like what you see on this blog, want to learn some very creative decorative stitches, and how to put them all together, whimsicalstitch.com sells stitch guides for seasonal Melissa Shirley designs.  20 guides are currently available and more are in the pipeline.

Enjoy!