Almost all the time, The Needlepoint Book is spot on for telling you how to stitch something. But as long as I have had this book (which is since 1977) Christensen’s explanation of Irregular Continental has left me flustered.
I love the random look of it and I certainly can see plenty of reasons to choose it. I like that it is random, but still goes into the holes in the canvas.
I haven’t chosen to stitch it largely because the explanation confused me. I have only done this stitch once for some mountains in a background. but the important this about irregular continental is that it is RANDOM. That is a very hard thing to get in needlepoint.
I would use two sizes of stitches, over 1 and 2 intersections. The longer stitches should never have more than 2 together in any direction.
The hard part is getting random. I’m lazy so mostly what I would do is scatter a bunch of longer stitches around, bout 25% of the area and then fill in the short stitches. If, as I was going along I thought a long stitch was needed, I’d throw it in.
But if you want to go in rows, you could use a die or a deck of cards with no face cards. Shuffle the cards. Roll the die or pick up the top card. If it is odd, stitch over 1 thread. If even, stitch over 2. If three evens come up in a row, throw in one or two odd stitches before continuing.
Doing that method you get random, but can still stitch in rows.
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See the article here:
How to Stitch Irregular Continental
