Hope Hanley - 101 Needlepoint Stitches and How to Use Them: Fully Illustrated with Photographs and Diagrams

The most efficient way to learn the stitches is to do them. Then you can see just how they will look for your design purposes. A picture or diagram just does not show the size relative to other stitches or the contrasting textures. Working a sampler is really an excellent way to make these discoveries. It is also a permanent record of the stitches that you are not liable to give away as you would with finished items. All you need to make a sampler is half a yard or less of mono-canvas, less than that of a two-thread canvas, needles and about four ounces of yarn. Bind the edges of the canvas with binding tape or masking tape and you are all set to go. A dressmakers chalk will mark off squares if you want to make a precise sampler, or you can just mix them random style. You will find as you work that design ideas will suggest themselves to you, so write them down; youll surely forget them otherwise. A sampler will show you just which stitches are the wool-eaters, and which bias the canvas. Keep in mind when you choose your sampler wool that light colors show texture best.

Two of the following stitches have tram as a base. It might be well to explain now just what it is. Some canvases are sold with the background and possibly the subject done in a long horizontal basting-like stitch. This is tram. It is used on these canvases to show what colors to use and to indicate the design. The right amount of wool and the right colors of wool are included with this type of canvas as a sort of kit. One stitches right over the tram as though it were not even there. It is an understitching. It must be laid on in irregular series, as it will form ridges if done in regular rows. Tram may also be used to add body to a stitch, to beef it up, and this is its purpose with the stitches included here. To figure the extra wool needed to tram, just halve the number of mesh per inch of the canvas you are using and add two inches to the figure for each square inch. Thus if you are using fourteen mesh canvas, half of fourteen is seven plus the two added inches equals nine extra inches of wool for each square inch of tram.

The following table lists suggested uses for the stitches. It is just a guide line for you to follow until you are familiar enough with the stitches to make your own judgments on them. The word filling means a stitch to be used in an enclosed area, not the background.

Only stitches which adequately cover the canvas have been included in the following collection. In tapestry no warp threads are allowed to show through, so why let canvas show through in needlepoint? No stitch combinations have been included, just the fundamental stitch. Think up your own combinations, as there are literally hundreds of them.

Tram on penelope canvas

From the number of initials on the motif sampler it would appear that a group of friends all took part in making it. Many colors were used in the figures, the background is black, and the stitch is the half cross. The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.