Needlepoint and crewel

The difference in short

Both are embroidery. They differ in six ways.

• What it is stitched on. Crewel is worked on a firm, closely woven cloth. Needlepoint is worked on canvas, a stiff, open weave with a hole between each thread and the next.
• Where the stitches go. In crewel they follow a design drawn on the cloth, in any direction and at any length; the weave of the cloth plays no part. In needlepoint the canvas decides: each stitch lies over a crossing of the canvas threads, so every stitch has its place on the grid.
• What is covered. Crewel fills the shapes of the design, and the cloth usually shows around them. Most needlepoint covers the canvas completely, background and all.
• The thread. Crewel is stitched in wool. Needlepoint is usually wool, and it is also worked in cotton, silk and other threads.
• The stitches. Crewel uses many different stitches in one piece. Needlepoint is most often worked in one, tent stitch: a small slanted stitch over one intersection, the place where two canvas threads cross.
• The needle. Crewel takes a needle with a sharp point, to pierce the cloth. Needlepoint takes a blunt needle, which passes through the holes of the canvas without splitting its threads.

What crewel is

Crewel is surface embroidery in wool. Surface embroidery is embroidery stitched freely, without regard to the weave of the cloth. Crewel is also called crewel work, crewelwork and Jacobean embroidery. Jacobean means of the time of James I of England, whose name in Latin is Jacobus: it is the style crewel took there in the early seventeenth century.

The work is named for its wool, not for any stitch. Crewel wool, also sold as crewel yarn, is a fine wool of two plies, loosely twisted. A strand is the length of wool that goes in the needle, and its plies are the finer threads twisted together to make it; they are not meant to be pulled apart. Free wool embroidery of this kind is now called crewel even when another wool is used.

The cloth has to be firm enough to carry the weight of wool stitches. By tradition it is linen twill: twill is a weave that shows a diagonal rib. Twill woven of linen one way and cotton the other, cloth of all linen or all cotton, and other firmly woven cloth are used too.

The outline of the design goes onto the cloth before any stitching. It is transferred by hand or printed, and kits often come with it printed. The cloth is then usually stretched tight in a frame, which keeps the stitches even and keeps the cloth from puckering under the wool.

The stitches most used include stem stitch and chain stitch, which draw the outlines; satin stitch, which fills a shape flat; long and short stitch, which shades one; and French knots, which add texture. They are often layered: a shape is outlined first, then filled. Flowers, leaves, vines, birds and other animals are the usual subjects.

Wool embroidery on linen is far older than the Jacobean style. The Bayeux Tapestry, from the eleventh century, is an early example. It is not a true tapestry, which is woven: it is embroidery, stitched in wool on linen cloth.

What needlepoint is

Needlepoint is the American name for embroidery on canvas, also called canvas work. The design is usually painted or printed on the canvas, so there is no chart to follow. A chart is the other form a design comes in: it is drawn on paper as a grid, one square to one stitch, and the stitcher counts its squares onto blank canvas. Painted, printed and charted canvas compares the three.

Canvas is stiff, and whether to stitch it on a frame is the stitcher's choice. A frame helps to keep the canvas in shape: see frames and stretcher bars. What is needlepoint describes the craft as a whole.

Where tapestry comes in

Tapestry is a third name given to stitched wool, and, the Bayeux Tapestry apart, it belongs with needlepoint, not with crewel. Strictly, a tapestry is woven on a loom. The word is also used for stitching on canvas, and needlepoint is the American name for that work. It has stuck to the tools as well: the blunt needle is a tapestry needle, and the thick wool made for canvas is tapestry wool.

Needlepoint vs embroidery sorts out the other names: petit point, bargello and cross stitch.

Crewel wool in needlepoint

Crewel wool is a needlepoint thread too. It is finer than tapestry wool, the thick wool made for canvas, which is a single strand of four plies. Three strands of crewel wool are about as thick as one strand of tapestry wool, and the lengths show it: one maker's hank of a little under an ounce (25 g) holds about 197 yards (180 m) of crewel wool, or about 60 yards (55 m) of tapestry wool.

On canvas one strand is too thin to cover, so several go through the eye of the needle side by side: cut as many lengths as the canvas needs and thread them together. Do not fold one length double, which makes fuzzier stitches.

How many strands depends on the mesh, the number of holes to the inch of canvas. The lower the number, the bigger the holes and the stitches: see canvas and mesh sizes.

• On 18 mesh, two strands, or three if two leave canvas showing.
• On 13 and 14 mesh, three or four strands: three stand in for the one strand of tapestry wool that these sizes can take. On 14 mesh, two are enough for some stitchers.
• On 12 mesh, four strands for a background that will get hard wear, such as a chair seat.
• For petit point, which is needlepoint in very small stitches, fine crewel wool is used. See petit point and gros point.

Work a few stitches and look before settling the number. If canvas shows between the stitches, add a strand. If the wool is too thick to pass easily through the holes, take one away. The thread guide has the other wools made for each mesh.

Because the strands are thin, strands of two colors can go in the needle together to shade one color into another.

The exchange runs the other way as well. Persian wool, a needlepoint wool, comes as three strands that are pulled apart before stitching, and a single strand of it suits fine embroidery on linen. So a yarn sold for both needlepoint and crewel is a fine wool: thin enough to embroider cloth with, and used on canvas in as many strands as the mesh needs.

What "crewel needlepoint" means

The two names are made in different ways. Needlepoint is named for what it is stitched on: it is embroidery on canvas, in almost any thread. Crewel is named for its wool. So the two words can meet, and the phrase can mean three different things.

• Needlepoint stitched in crewel wool. It is needlepoint, in a fine wool.
• The stitches of crewel worked on canvas. Any embroidery stitch can be worked on canvas, and the stitches used in crewel, reworked to fit the canvas grid, have been taught as crewel point. Whatever the stitches, embroidery on canvas is canvas work.
• Wool embroidery on cloth. If wool is stitched freely on closely woven cloth with no open mesh, the piece is crewel, whatever it has been called.

On a kit, a pattern or a finished piece, the name alone does not say which of the three is meant. What it is stitched on settles it: on cloth it is crewel, on canvas it is needlepoint. The next section has the checks.

How to tell which one a piece is

An old wool picture or pillow may be either, and crewel is a real possibility: it was in fashion again in the 1960s and 1970s, kits were still easy to find in the early 1980s, and finished pieces often turn up in thrift stores.

Look only at what shows. Leave a framed piece in its frame, and do not clean an old piece of either kind before asking a textile conservator. Old needlepoint says how to handle an old piece and when it should go to a conservator.

• Find what it is stitched on. Look wherever it is bare: around the design, at an unstitched edge, or on the back if the back is open to view. Closely woven cloth points to crewel. An open mesh of threads and holes is canvas, and so needlepoint. Where nothing bare shows, go by the next two checks.
• See how much is stitched. Cloth showing around the flowers and leaves is the mark of crewel. Stitches that fill the whole area, background as well, are the mark of needlepoint.
• Look at the stitches. Small slanted stitches of one size, lined up in rows, are tent stitch on canvas. Stitches of many lengths that curve with the design and change direction from shape to shape, with knots among them, are surface embroidery.

These checks tell crewel from needlepoint without naming the thread. What the thread is made of matters only on cloth: free stitching there in cotton or silk is embroidery of another kind. Do not pull out a thread to find out: old needlepoint says who can examine a piece.

An unworked kit is easier to tell. Both kinds can come with the design printed on, so look at what it is printed on: closely woven cloth in a crewel kit, canvas with open holes in a needlepoint kit. Color in the print does not make it needlepoint: on a crewel kit, parts of the print can be solid color and are meant to stay unstitched. See needlepoint kits.

Which to take up

Needlepoint is the simpler start. The canvas guides the needle: its grid keeps the stitches regular, the design is usually there on the canvas to follow, and a whole piece can be worked in one stitch. Start with how to needlepoint.

Crewel asks for several stitches from the first piece, and each is placed by eye. It is not hard to learn all the same: wool on linen twill hides small faults, and a wrong stitch comes out easily. Start with a simple design and the simpler stitches: chain, back, split and stem.

Both are made into things for the house. Canvas work has covered cushions since the sixteenth century and furniture since the seventeenth. Crewel today mostly decorates curtains, cushions, wall hangings and clothing. The subjects crewel is known for are stitched on canvas as well: see needlepoint flowers and birds.