Roman Filling Stitch

This interesting stitch is the Roman Filling Stitch. This is the latest stitch I have learned from my 100 Stitches Plus list.

I found the directions for this stitch in Embroidery Stitches by Mary Webb.  This stitch is made up of two stitches, a series of seven vertical Straight Stitches in varying lengths, each crossed with a tiny horizontal Straight Stitch.  It is a good stitch to use for filling in large shapes.

That sounds really simple and straightforward right?

For me, it was so hard to keep the stitch spacing even and my lines straight!  

I used a ruler and marked guidelines, but still....

For my demonstration, I used perle cotton floss in black and white.  With the single strand perle cotton it is so much easier to see my process.  I also spaced my stitches pretty far apart so that you can easily see them.

So first off, I drew two parallel guidelines 1/2" apart. I brought my needle up through the fabric on the top guideline.  I found it easiest to make the longest vertical Straight Stitch first and then space all the others off that.

I pulled all the way through and then went back into the fabric on the bottom guideline:

That formed the first Straight Stitch.

Then I added six more vertical Straight Stitches, evenly spaced with three on each side of the longest stitch.

When that was finished, the next step is the horizontal stitches across each vertical stitch.  I used white floss for this step:

I came up through the fabric alongside the first stitch on the left side:

and went back into the fabric on the right side of the first stitch:

I pulled all the way through to make the first horizontal Straight Stitch.  

Then I just repeated that over each of the vertical stitches:

Here is a view of the underside of the stitching:

This is a fairly simple stitch and I am looking forward to trying this as a filler for some larger shapes in my embroidery.