True Stitch Name for Needle Painting/Silk Shading
- Jessica Devin
- Sep 11
- 2 min read
I have always been taught/told that when working a needle painting (silk shading, thread painting, soft shading, etc), we use long and short stitch.
But then I had a long thought yesterday while winding threads. In my old (really old) books, they don’t say long and short, they say Kensington stitch. I kind of assumed it was just an old name the same stitch. But then it dawned on me, we don’t work long and short technically correct when needle painting. We want the stitches to all be different lengths and different placemats down along the previous stitch’s length. Long and short is worked with a row of long followed by short stitches, then the same length of stitch for following rows, but with placement determined by the previous stitches length. So, I thought, maybe Kensington stitch is the more correct term to use? The more I thought about it, the more sure I was that I was right.
So I looked it up.
The original stitch called opus plumarium (in that it resembled plumage of a bird), was traditionally worked for flowers, but can be used from everything from stitching humans to any kind of animal and everything in between. Kensington stitch is a newer term for opus plumarium. As it turns out, Kensington stitch is a form of long short. It’s kind of like comparing dogs to Corgis. Every Corgi is a dog, not all dogs are Corgis. Kensington stitch is a long and short, but not all long and short is Kensington. See where I’m heading with this? So yes, while technically we are using long and short, is it more correct to say Kensington? At least it defines the type of stitch and how it’s worked more precisely, at least that’s my opinion.
Thoughts?
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