Create crisp, eye-catching bird tracks on a white snowy background using only two stitches: fern stitch and fly stitch.
This project is ideal for a beginner and makes a quick, fun project for any stitcher. You can follow the steps in this blog, or watch the video linked below.
The idea for this project came when I was filming a fern stitch tutorial and realised it could look like duck footprints.
Tracks in the snow look so striking – everything you’d normally see is under snow, except for the footprints that are usually invisible. Bird tracks are so spindly and skeletal, I thought they should be fairly easy to stitch.
In the end, although they weren’t too tricky, I did have to think about how to adapt the stitches to get the design to look right. I had to try out each footprint to see which ideas worked and which didn’t, and make changes so I could get the results I wanted.
I’ve used a combination of fern stitch and fly stitch to suggest footprints from a blackbird, a duck, a wood pigeon and a pheasant.
I used a blue fabric pen to mark out the different tracks. It’s water soluble and washes out very easily when the stitching is done.
It’s a very small pattern – I’m using a 3 inch hoop. This project was an experiment to see what worked, so I started with a design I could stitch in about an hour.
Some of the prints are more curved than others but it’s tricky to create curves with single stitches. A larger outline would be more simple because I could use backstitch or stem stitch and sketch the prints in thread.
This project is on a smaller scale and you’ll see which tracks made me think a bit.
Most of the time I used two strands of black DMC embroidery floss. Next time I would choose three or four strands to give the outlines more definition.
I used a variation of fern stitch for the blackbird’s tracks, with slightly staggered stitches. I made one long central stitch and added the branching stitches slightly further up to suggest the blackbird’s toes. This was like sketching – all straight stitches and the spiky tracks emerge, looking very distinctive.
The first part of the duck’s tracks is stitched in plain fern stitch – three stitches branching out from the same base, nice and simple.
I used one strand for the webbing because it doesn’t make such a deep impression in the snow as the toes.
My first thought was to try straight stitches and leave the thread a little slack. But the design is very small so it was too difficult to create curves with any definition and they pulled straight very easily.
My next plan was fly stitch. I left a small length of thread slack and anchored it with a tiny stitch. Even this small stitch interrupted the curve of the thread, but it suggested webbing better than a single thread.
The wood pigeon tracks have a more uneven look – I wondered if that might show that the pigeon is placing it’s weight on the outer edge of each foot, so that the inner toes make less of an impression.
I used fly stitch again and placed the anchor stitch off-centre so that the toes looked uneven. I liked the curve that I got from making the stitch asymmetrical. I put an extra stitch in the middle of the foot to finish off the pattern.
The pheasant footprints have a lovely spiky curve so I had to think about how I would create this curve with single stitches.
I used a variation of fern stitch again, making the middle toe longer and splaying the other toes out at either side. The final stitch at the back sits at a slightly different angle to the middle stitch to suggest the curve of the foot. You can see the difference in contrast to the blackbird’s straight tracks.
The fabric marker washed off very easily, leaving lovely clear tracks. I really like the contrast of dark, spiky prints on a pristine surface.
Once I’d stitched this piece, it gave me an idea for a slightly different version – a spiral of tracks on felt, to suggest the depth of the snow a bit more. I’ve used the same stitches, but made them a little larger, and I used a blue-grey thread to suggest deeper snow, where the tracks haven’t reached the ground.
I like this kind of project – where one quick experiment leads to another idea. I could do more intricate versions of this design if I wanted to develop it further, but I’m happy with these studies for now. Sometimes it’s nice to have an idea and just see it stitched up.