Originally posted 2007-08-08 06:22:44. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
You know that sinking feeling, the intersection on the hand-painted canvas is more than one color. You don’t know how to decide what color to stitch.
I call deciding this making an “executive decision” in needlepoint. I thought about what the process was for deciding and came up with some guidelines. Although beginners struggle with this issue, it can come up in just about any canvas which is not completely stitch-painted.
If one color covers more of the intersection than the other, stitch it in that color.
If it’s pretty much half and half, then you could do either. To help you choose, you can see if any of these apply:
1. Is it colored in both foreground and background colors? Choose the foreground color.
2. Is it the only intersection which has that color (no intersections with that color around it)? Choose the isolated color because it’s supposed to be a dot of that color.
3. Is it colored a light color and a dark color? Darker colors recede, so picking the darker color will probably make the two areas look more balanced.
4. I one color part of a line? Follow the line on the canvas to see how it will look if this intersection is stitched in that color. I’ve had it happen sometimes when stitching the color of the line instead of the other color made the line look bad.
Sometimes you choose wrong, everyone does. If this happens, don’t be afraid to pull the stitch out and use the other color.
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What Color Should that Stitch Be?
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An easy way to accent the focal point of any needlerpoint, especially if it is a simple one such as this
autumn leaf, is to have the background stitch “point” to the center of the stitching. This process is called “mitering.”
When you miter a background, you will turn the direction of the stitch so that the line of stitches always points towards the center. To make this work you will need to be using box or diagonal stitches, and you will need to stitch each corner individually.
For this background I used Diagonal Mosaic (diagrammed above).
The hardest thing, I found, about doing this technique is finding the middle. Since this is a diamond, the middle is the intersection at each compass point. If the middle were a hole, my two mitered corners could meet each other. Because it is an intersection, I made a line of Continental from the point to the leaf to mark the boundary. Each of these was stitched before beginning to stitch a side.
The result makes even a simple piece and background stitch more exciting. I’m planning on further emphasizing the leaf by using the same technique for the corners, this time with Byzantine.
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Highlighting the Focal Point – Mitered Backgrounds in Needlepoint
