Featherstitch or feather stitch and Cretan stitch or faggoting stitch are embroidery

Embroidery

Embroidery is the art or handicraft of decorating fabric or other materials with needle and thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as metal strips, pearls, beads, quills, and sequins....

 techniques made of open, looped stitches

Embroidery stitch

In everyday language, a stitch in the context of embroidery or hand-sewing is defined as the movement of the embroidery needle from the backside of the fabric to the front side and back to the back side. The thread stroke on the front side produced by this is also called stitch...

 worked alternately to the right and left of a central rib. Fly stitch is categorized with the featherstitches.

Applications

Cretan stitch is characteristic of embroidery of Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...

 and the surrounding regions.

Open Cretan stitch or faggoting is used in making open decorative seams and to attach insertions.

Featherstitch embroidery arose in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 in the 19th century for decorating smock-frock

Smock-frock

A smock-frock or smock is an outer garment traditionally worn by rural workers, especially shepherds and waggoners, in parts of England and Wales from the early eighteenth century...

s. It is also used to decorate the joins in crazy quilting

Crazy quilting

The term "crazy quilting" is often used to refer to the textile art of crazy patchwork and is sometimes used interchangeably with that term. Crazy quilting does not actually refer to a specific kind of quilting , but a specific kind of patchwork...

. It is related to (and probably derives from) the older buttonhole stitch

Buttonhole stitch

Buttonhole stitch and the related blanket stitch are hand-sewing stitches used in tailoring, embroidery, and needle lace-making.Holy Buttons stitches catch a loop of the thread on the surface of the fabric and needle is returned to the back of the fabric at a right angle to the original start of...

 and chain stitch

Chain stitch

Chain stitch is a sewing and embroidery technique in which a series of looped stitches form a chain-like pattern. Chain stitch is an ancient craft - examples of surviving Chinese chain stitch embroidery worked in silk thread have been dated to the Warring States period...

.

Featherstitch variants

Common variants of featherstitch include:

• Basic featherstitch
• Long-armed featherstitch
• Double featherstitch
• Closed featherstitch
• Chained feather stitch

Looped stitches

Other looped stitches include:

• Cretan stitch or Open Cretan stitch or faggoting stitch
• Closed Cretan stitch
• Fishbone stitch
• Fly stitch, a filling stitch made of single, detached tacked loops.
• Loop stitch
• Scroll stitch