My love of diamond shapes in my stitches is well documented. My love of Alternating Skip Tent has equal documentation. Imagine my joy when today’s stitch merged the two!

The stitched sample is the background on a soon-to-be-released guide for the Wool & Willow/Blue Ridge Stitchery London series. It uses three plies of Needlepoint Inc. Silk (yellow lines) and Petite Silk Lame (black lines).

The stitch is a fun way to add two colors to a small-ish area or an area where you want some interest without overwhelming the remainder of the piece. A stitching friend of mine is going to be using this stitch for a white background on a colorful piece. She’s working with a metallic thread matching one of the bright colors from the main area for the yellow lines in the diagram and filling in the remainder with white stitches. This stitch will make a really cute two-color floor with a tan matte for the yellow lines and a light blue matte for the black lines.

These stitch diagrams, along with all other #whimsicalwednesday and #smallspacesunday stitch diagrams, can also be found on a Pinterest board here. Be sure to follow whimsicalstitch.com on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter.

If you like what you see on this blog, there's more: Mary’s Whimsical Stitches Volume 1 is a contemporary how-to collection of more than 250 stitches for stitchers regardless of skill level. The book includes updated and sequenced diagrams from this blog, all-new stitches, and a chapter on the basics of needlepoint; Mary’s Whimsical Stitches Volume 2 features chapters on Balanced, Beading, Diagonal, Layered, Oblique, Small, and Straight stitches.

Also, you can download for free the first chapter from my first book which covers basic needlepoint stitches and stitch compensation techniques along with new top-line information on needlepoint materials and tools, how to handle threads, and other helpful needlepoint resources.

whimsicalstitch.com also sells Stitch Guides and Stitch Concepts for Melissa Shirley Designs, Zecca Designs, Sandra Gilmore, Purple Palm, Maggie, and Penny MacLeod, and many more. Click here to see the newest guides and click here to see the entire collection.

I hope you have the perfect spot for this stitch! Please enjoy! Have a wonderful #whimsicalwednesday!

A Note about Diagrams
I use color in diagrams to make them as clear as possible.  The primary function of different colored lines is to illustrate a stitch sequence.  For example, layering of colors demonstrates you add them in that order.  They can also provide ideas on how to integrate additional threads (one line for each color).  Or, you can use the same thread for all color lines.  That's where I encourage you to use your imagination for the space you are stitching!