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• Purchasing a Kit
• Preparing to Stitch
• Stitching
• Stretching the Finished Canvas
• Finishing (sewing) the Cushion

I'm quite convinced that the reason there are more people doing cross-stitch than needlepoint is the relative costs. You can buy several skeins of cotton floss for a dollar but needlepoint materials are more expensive. I much prefer the finished product but that, of course, why I do needlepoint.

If you prefer not to work from a chart, there are two alternatives: buy a kit  or purchase a canvas and and threads. Here we'll be discussing, working a kit. The project I've chosen to illustrate this process White Peony by Kaffe Fassett.  This kit is available from Ehrman Tapestry at www.ehrmantapestry.com. I've added as many pictures as possible to make things clearer.

A project of this size will take an average stitcher 40 to 60 hours to complete so please be patient with the speed at which this page evolves. At this rate, you can consider the price to be a good entertainment value. After all, what are you paying to spend less than 2 hours in the dark at your local theatre.

Do yourself a big favor and purchase a quality kit. As is true with most things in life, you get what you pay for. There are plenty of inexpensive kits out there but they usually contain the cheapest, poorest quality wool and canvas. I've worked a couple of these so I know. Your local shop will have at least a couple of kits or there are plenty of good suppliers on the internet. Try your local search engine and have a good look around.  

Kits contain all the materials required for the project: canvas, wool and a needle. There will also be instructions for sorting the wool and usually a small stitch diagram showing how to do the tent stitch(es) - continental, half-cross and basketweave. You'll have to supply your own scissors. 

Canvas: If you have the opportunity, have a good look at the canvas before you buy. Most kits contain a "machine printed" canvas. This can be well printed or BADLY printed.  Check to see that the register or design is "on".  

This is a photo of the corner of my canvas. You can see that the border colors are printed exactly on the lines of the canvas. I've worked canvases where a line like this has drifted three stitches over from top to bottom.  You can imagine what a nightmare it becomes to shift the design over a couple of stitches.

Wool: Good kits contain not only good quality wool but enough wool to complete the design.  Quality manufacturers, like Ehrman, offer to send you additional wool at no charge should you run out. For example, this could happen if you have to unpick an area because you used the incorrect color.

Needle: One needle is usually supplied with a kit. You might want to purchase a spare at your local shop in case this one gets misplaced. Tapestry needles comes in a variety of sizes and are round ended so as not to split the canvas or the wool.

Scissors: Small, sharp scissors are a necessity for all stitchers.

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Before I stitch, I usually attach the canvas to a frame. It's also a good idea to use masking tape to seal the edges of the canvas.  This prevents the canvas from unraveling and the wool from catching on the raw edge.  

Next, sort the yarn into the different colors and attach a small piece of wool to the color guide painted one side of the canvas. This is the color guide for another kit: Mikado Maids.  I keep this color guide with my wool for quick reference if I'm not sure which color I should be using.

I can't emphasis enough the importance of sorting your wool and completing the color guide. The more colors contained in the kit, the higher the chance of confusion. You cannot rely on matching the wool to the color on the canvas.  The canvas has been printed to distinguish between the colors and will often be very different from the color of the wool.

This is a photo illustrating this issue.  The leaves on the right have been stitched and you can see that the greens are rather muted.  The leaves on the left are unstitched.  Here the differences between the greens are striking - clearly indicating which colored areas are which.

Finally, find a comfortable, well lit place to stitch - and enjoy.

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I usually start stitching near the centre of the canvas and work outward. This is partially because most of my stitching is done from charts. Friends who stitch without using a frame have said that the canvas is easier to hold and work, if you start from the centre. 

In a piece like this with a plain background, I always complete the design before I start the background. In spite of my best intentions, my tension changes with my mood. When I'm aggravated or in a hurry, I pull my stitches a little tighter than when I'm relaxed.  This not particularly critical in the design area but is bad news in a large plain area. So I leave the background for the end and fill it in mindlessly while riding in cars or planes or in front of the TV.

While I'm stitching, I always work in the ends of the wool as I go. I find that leaving them hanging behind the piece makes a knotted mess and causes the finished piece to be lumpy. Because I work two handed, I often pierce this little tuft of wool and drag it back through the canvas. 

Some people disagree. Elian McCready once said to a group of us taking a course at her home that if the back was neat that you didn't have a enough fun with it.

NOTE: For those of you who are interested, I use the following method to calculate the time it will take to complete a project. This kit is stitched on 10-count canvas which means there are 100 stitches to each square inch.  The design is 17 by 17 inches - making a total of 289 square inches or 28,900 stitches.  I then assume that I stitch at the rate of 10 stitches per minute (or 600 stitches an hour).  This piece would then take me about 48 hours to stitch.

I have chosen 10 stitches per minute for ease of calculation.  When I stitch plain background, I do about 13 or 14 stitches per minute but in areas where there are many color changes, this number is considerably lower.  It also factors in reaching for the proper color wool, threading the needle and working the ends of the strands. Try timing a piece of your own work, as you may stitch faster or slower than I do.

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To stretch the canvas. I use a piece of clean plywood, an industrial staple gun and a plant sprayer filled with water.  Using the edge of the wood as a guide, I start by stapling a single side of the canvas to the wood, stretching the canvas taut as I work.

Using the sprayer, dampen the entire canvas to make it more pliable and easier  to stretch.  When the kit is new, the sizing serves to keep the canvas firm for stitching. Wet, the sizing looses it's shape allowing you to reshape and correct any distortion that occurred during stitching. Then when it dries, it takes on this new shape. However, you usually can only do this only once effectively so take reasonable care to get the canvas as square as possible the first time.

Again using the edge of the wood as a guide and stretching the canvas as I go, I staple the top to the wood.