As I mentioned in my last post – this month I have been exploring all kinds of Crescent Stitches (and their variations) and all kinds of Jessicas – both by Jean Hilton.

My two favorite Jean Hilton books for exploring these two stitches are:

• The Hilton Sampler
• Jean Hilton’s Stimulating Stitches

Let’s first discuss my exploration of Crescent stitches.  First I took the basic shaped Crescent stitch and explored layering them as shown below on the left.  Next I explored what Jean called a “Double Crescent” (shown below in the middle).  Then I started to explore some of the different shaped Crescent stitches in my books.  She has several shapes that she lapeled “Exotic Crescents” – one of them was the Curved Leaf Crescent (shown below on the right)

The next type of Crescent stitch that I explored was variations of the Fleur-de-lis Crescent.  The first one was the Fleur-de-lis Heart – this is putting two side by side but flipping the one side so they join to form a heart (shown on the left), next was putting two end-to-end to create what Jean called a “Serpentine Crescent” (shown in the middle).  Lastly, I explored a portion of what she called “Topsy-Turvy” which was a circular type shape made by joining curved crescents tail-to-tail and back to back (shown on the right).

The last type of Crescent I explored is one Jean called a “Loop-to-Loop Crescent”.  I tried several of these as shown in the photo below.

Next I explored various types of Jessica stitches.  The traditional Jessica stitch creates a circle.  The “size” of the center hole for the circle depends on where you start – in other words, where you put the 1-2 stitch.  I first explored several examples that Jean had changing where the first stitch went.  The results of this exploration are shown in the photo below on the left.    Next I explored different shapes, the first of which was the triangle and looked at both tall and short ones as shown below on the right.

The next shapes I explored where a polygon (slanted square) and ovals.  I tried the ovals both horizontally and vertically as shown below in the photo on the left.  Then I tried her Lacy Diamond Jessica – shown below in the photo on the right.

Lastly, I explored overlapping Jessicas to make a chain of them.  The photos below show the results of that exploration

I hope you enjoyed by explorations with these stitches and all the varieties.  I am going to continue exploring stitches that Jean Hilton used in her designs – next will be the Sprat’s Head, Walneto and the Amadeus stitches.