Stitching!
All about Stitching

 

 

The art of decorative stitching has been traced back to as early as the first century AD. I trace my history of decorative stitching to my early child hood, when my mother taught me to embroider.  My enthusiasm however didn’t really develop until I entered college.  My first projects were bargello pillows that came in kits. Bargello is usually used to describe using yarn over a stiff canvas in repeated patterns with names like Flame, Florentine Brick and Byzantine  

But then  my sister taught me cross-stitch and  I was hooked.  My journey started with Aida cloth, like most people.  Aida is an evenweave fabric, that is the up and down and across threads that make up the fabric are evenly spaced,  and has the advantage of coming in many, many colors as well as different “counts”  With Aida cloth the weaving leaves easily seen “holes” or spaces between the threads.  The “count refers to how many of these holes there are per inch.  Most Aida has 14 or 18 holes per inch so it is called 14 count or 18 count..  But it is also available in 11, and 16 counts.  The bigger the fabric count the more stitches per inch the smaller the design.

Then I discovered linen and all of the other fabrics that are usually lumped together as “evenweave”.  These include Casal, Belfast, Luanga, Murana, Monaco and lots more.  Most of the linens have higher counts.  Usually 28 through 36 count  but since you stitch over two threads at a time; you’re really working on 14 to 18 count. At the other end of the scale are fabrics like Herta which is a very loose weave and has a count gerneral of 6.  After I completed countless pictures and pillows with cross-stitch I began to branch out.  That’s when the fun really started. 
Any piece of cloth I looked at, I thought about how could I use stitching.  Some things you can buy ready made for stitching.  Table runners, napkins, bread clothes, Afghans baby bibs  the list is endless.  But I also started using stitching to embellish my sweatshirts, sweaters, tee shirts.  I made bookends, key chains, jewelry lots of things

 It wasn’t a big leap to move into needlepoint, which I consider just half cross-stitch.  It is really a little more complicated than that but not much.  And when you do your needlepoint or cross-stitch on perforated paper or plastic canvas your work becomes very portable since you don’t need a hoop.  With the plastic canvas I can take my projects almost anywhere.  The last time I tried to take a cross-stitch project with me on a plane trip, I was stopped in airport security and had my bags x-rayed 3 times and finally searched by hand.  It was the metal in my hoop that was causing the problem.  I learned my lesson and now bring a plastic canvas or paper kit with me on vacations.

Using plastic canvas has opened up many more project ideas for me.  I have tissue box covers, baskets, Christmas ornaments, jewelry and lots more.  It also led to my newfound interest in beading, which I am experimenting with adding to both fabric and plastic/perforated paper applications. 

 

Have any questions

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