This post expresses my love of Rhodes Stitch and shows you how to stitch a Rhodes Octagon and Square in the hopes of passing the Rhodes love on...
Rhodes stitch is one of my all time favourite decorative needlepoint stitches. It was designed by Mary Rhodes, a fellow English Needlepoint Designer, who loved adding texture to her designs and exploring the ways the textures of different stitches worked within a design.
Moreover, Mary was an advocate for tent stitch (yay, Mary!) and her students introduced needlepoint to the States...which really surprised me! These days needlepoint is much bigger there than here in the UK so I assumed it started there and filtered over, how wrong was I?!
The best thing about decorative stitches is that they cover a lot of canvas quickly, look really pretty and entrance your admirers who have no idea how to do them, convincing them that you're a magician with needle and thread when actually this one's (and most are) really easy when you know how 😉
Rhodes comes in loads of variations and can be stitched in all different sizes but today we're just going to focus on the octagon and square stitch used in the Turkish Jewel Scissor Pouch and Minders that was published in the Nov/Dec '18 issue of Needlepoint Now and the matching needle book, respectively.
This is also a great tutorial if you just like how it looks and want to find out how to add it to your own projects!
How To Embroider A Rhodes Octagon
Bring the needle up at 1, down at 2, up at 3 and so on. When you bring the needle down at 16 the stitch will be complete. For the Turkish Jewel Sewing Accessories Set, use 5 strands of stranded cotton for a full appearance and maximum canvas coverage.
How To Embroider A Rhodes Square
Bring the needle up at 1, down at 2, up at 3 and so on. Work in an anti-clockwise direction. For the Turkish Jewel Sewing Accessories Set, use 5 strands of
stranded cotton for a full appearance and maximum canvas coverage.
That's all there is to it, you can scale the stitch up or down but because it's quite bulky when finished you won't want to go too huge with it, especially if it's stitched in a thick yarn.
Fred's Top Tip
To get full looking stitches that lay flat and smooth when stitching a Rhodes in stranded cotton embroidery floss the best thing to do is separate the stranded floss into its six separate strands and then recombine them. This means you'll remove the twist in the thread and will lay flatter when you sew with them.
That's all for now... I hope this has inspired you to have a go at a Rhodes stitch! I bet you'll be stitching it on everything you can in no time.
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Shannan, Bobbin and Fred xX
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