How to design your own needlepoint

A design is a chart

A chart is the design drawn on a grid, one square for each stitch. In tent stitch, the basic stitch, a stitch is one slant over one intersection, the place where two canvas threads cross: how to needlepoint shows the stitch. Designing a piece comes down to deciding the color of every square.

Nothing smaller than one square can be shown, and every edge follows the grid, so a curve or a slanted line becomes a run of small steps. The steps are not a fault to hide: choose shapes that are still plain to see once they are drawn in steps.

The chart can be drawn square by square, traced from a drawing or converted from a photograph. Needlepoint can also be stitched with no chart at all, which is called freeform.

Start from a drawing or a photograph of your own, or from a picture that is free of copyright. Painted canvases and published charts are their designers' work and not yours to copy.

Settle the size first

Mesh is the number of holes, and so of tent stitches, in an inch of canvas: canvas and mesh sizes explains it. Most painted canvases are 13 or 18 mesh, and those two are used here. Canvas is also sold in 10, 12 and 14 mesh, and the same sum holds for them.

The size of a design in stitches is its size in inches multiplied by the mesh. Work out the width and the height separately: a piece need not be square.

The canvas size calculator does the sum in either direction, for 10, 12, 13, 14 and 18 mesh.

• Which mesh. On 13 mesh the holes are bigger and there are fewer stitches to make: choose it for a first design. Eighteen mesh holds nearly twice as many stitches in a square inch, 324 against 169, and so finer detail: see "What survives at 13 and 18 mesh" below.
• What it will be. Think about the finished thing before fixing the size. An ornament or another small piece made of simple shapes is a good place to start.
• Count the background in. The size is the size of the whole piece. A flower 78 stitches across on a chart of 90 has 12 stitches of background to share between its two sides.
• Allow for finishing. Finishing is making the stitched canvas up into the ornament, the pillow or the belt, often by a professional finisher. It can take the outermost two or three rows of stitching, so keep the motif, the main figure of the design, clear of the edge. Some finishes also need extra rows of plain stitching beyond the design, most often two, which the finisher folds under; many need none. Ask the finisher or a needlepoint shop before the count is fixed: needlepoint finishing says more.
• Cut the canvas bigger. Allow at least two inches (5 cm) of bare canvas on every side of the design, for finishing and for blocking: a finished piece is dampened and pinned square to dry.

Draw it on graph paper

Any squared paper will do, because the stitched size comes from the number of squares and not from the size of the paper. On paper ruled at the scale of the canvas, a drawing is the size the stitching will be.

The graph paper tool prints such a sheet for 10, 12, 13, 14 or 18 mesh, with a heavier line every ten squares. Print it at 100 percent, with no "fit to page", then measure the bar printed at the foot of the sheet: it should be exactly one inch (2.54 cm) long. If it is not, check the print settings and print again.

On Letter paper the ruled part of the sheet is about 7 1/2 by 9 3/4 inches (19 by 25 cm), which holds 97 by 127 squares on 13 mesh and 135 by 176 on 18. Draw a larger design across several sheets and count from one to the next: the sheets carry no marks for joining them.

1. Rule the outline of the piece by counting squares across and down. For a round piece, draw a circle as many squares across as the piece is stitches wide, around a cup, a bowl or a jar of that width.
2. Mark the center each way: the line between the two middle squares where the count is even, the middle row of squares where it is odd. The design is placed by these marks, and the canvas will later be counted from its own center.
3. Sketch the design lightly in pencil to fill the outline.
4. Square the sketch: go around each shape and redraw its edge along the lines of the grid, in steps, until every square lies wholly inside one shape. A round outline is squared in the same way. The next section has the rules for a square that a line cuts through.
5. Color the squares with pencils or markers, or give each color a symbol and write a key, the list that says which thread each symbol stands for. The pencil colors are a first guess: the threads are chosen later.
6. Look at the drawing in a mirror before calling it done. The mirror shows up a design that is lopsided or badly proportioned.

Charting software and free pattern makers online do the same job on a screen: choose the mesh and the size, fill in the empty grid, and change a square as often as you like. A large chart prints across several pages. Some of these programs are made for cross stitch, which is charted the same way, one square to a stitch: set the program's count to the mesh of the canvas.

Turning a drawing into squares

A drawing made on plain paper, or a picture, has to be the size of the outline ruled on the graph paper before it is traced.

If the drawing is the wrong size, a picture kept on a computer can be printed again at the size needed. A drawing on paper is enlarged or reduced square by square. Rule a grid over it: these squares are only a guide for copying, not the squares of the chart. On a second sheet rule the same number of squares, larger or smaller: half an inch (1.3 cm) across on the drawing and three quarters of an inch (2 cm) on the copy make the copy one and a half times the size. Then draw in each new square what its old square holds.

To get the drawing onto graph paper, pin or tape the graph paper over it at the four corners, hold the pair against a window pane and trace the lines in pencil.

Then square the lines. Each square can have only one color, and a traced line cuts through squares.

• Give a square the color that fills more of it.
• Where two colors share a square evenly, give it to the color that keeps the steps of the edge even, so that a curve still looks like a curve and not like one big step. Then give the same color to every other shared square along that edge.
• Small leaves and petals lose their shape when squared. It is often quicker to erase one and draw it again straight onto the grid, square by square.

Charting a photo

The photo tool turns a picture into a chart for tent stitch, working on your own device. Choose the mesh, the width of the finished piece in inches and a limit on the number of thread colors, from 2 to 30. The chart can be from 10 to 300 stitches wide, and the tool lists the thread colors it used. A drawing made in a drawing program, or a piece of clip art, converts in the same way.

• Pick a simple picture, in few colors, whose subject is clear at a glance.
• Crop it so that the subject fills the picture. A subject that fills little of the photo gets few stitches, and few stitches hold little detail.
• Set the color limit low, at 6 to 12. The more colors allowed, the more speckled the chart, with lone stitches of nearly the same shade scattered through it.
• Treat the chart as a start. Print it, and redraw by hand the small parts that came out wrong.

What survives at 13 and 18 mesh

One stitch is one thirteenth of an inch across on 13 mesh, about 2 mm, and one eighteenth on 18 mesh, about 1.4 mm. That is the thinnest line and the smallest dot the mesh allows.

To see whether a part of the design will survive, work out how many squares it gets and try to draw it in that many. A letter half an inch (1.3 cm) tall gets 6 or 7 squares of height on 13 mesh and 9 on 18. Capitals and numerals can be drawn five squares tall, which is about 3/8 inch (1 cm) on 13 mesh. If a part cannot be drawn in the squares it gets, make it bigger, make it simpler or leave it out.

• Big, simple shapes, wide patches of one color and firm outlines come through on 13 mesh.
• Thin lines, small lettering, the features of a face and gradual shading come out coarse on 13 mesh and have more room on 18. A face is the hardest subject at any mesh, and a poor choice for a first design.
• A crowded design stays crowded on 18 mesh: more stitches do not rescue it.

Thin lines. The stitching will not look exactly like the chart: each square is stitched as a slant, and every tent stitch slants up to the right. In a line one stitch wide that climbs to the right, each stitch begins where the last one ended, and the line is unbroken. In one that slopes down to the right, the stitches lie apart like the rungs of a ladder, and the line can look dotted. A letter V drawn one stitch wide shows both: its right arm joins up and its left arm does not.

A line that slopes down to the right can be left as charted: the eye still reads a row of separate stitches as a line. To join it, lay one long stitch of the same thread along the line and work the tent stitches over it, which thickens the line. Or, on the chart, add one more square of the line's color at each step, between the two stitches that sit apart, which makes a small triangle there. Stitch the line on a scrap of the same canvas before deciding.

How many colors, and which

A design drawn in flat shapes needs few colors: a flower on a plain background can take four, three pinks and a white. Gradual shading adds more, because it has to be drawn as steps from light to dark, each step a thread of its own. Every color added is one more thread to buy and more ends to fasten off, and a design that will be painted on the canvas does better with 6 to 12 colors than with 25.

Choose the colors with thread in hand, of a kind that fits the mesh: the thread guide says which, and a needlepoint shop is a good place to find them.

• Look at lightness as well as color. How light or dark a color is, apart from its hue, is called its value. Two colors of the same value run together when seen from across a room, even a blue and a green. To test a set of threads, photograph them in black and white: if two threads meant to contrast come out the same gray, change one.
• Look at them all together. Lay out every thread for the piece and look at the set with your eyes out of focus. If one does not belong, replace it, and check whether another now has to change too.
• Judge one length of thread, not the whole skein. Thread wound in a skein or on a spool looks darker than a single length of it does. Lay one length against the background color.
• Use the light the piece will be seen in. A color changes between sunlight and lamplight. Colors on a screen or from a printer are not exact either, so choose from the threads themselves, or from a color card made with real thread.
• Stitch a sample. Work a few stitches of each color side by side on a scrap of the canvas the piece will use. It shows the colors together, and whether the thread covers the canvas.

Backgrounds and borders

The background is charted too. Needlepoint is nearly always stitched to cover the canvas completely, so every square around the motif gets a color.

• Choose the background with the other colors and not after them: a change of background can mean changing them all.
• A background much darker or lighter than the motif makes the motif stand out.
• A background of one color need not be flat. A decorative stitch, one that makes a pattern of its own where tent stitch is plain, gives it texture: which stitch to use lists stitches for backgrounds and for borders.
• The thread calculator estimates how much thread a background takes.

Borders. A border made of one unit drawn over and over, each unit called a repeat, has to fit the side it runs along.

1. Count the squares along a side, then mark on the chart where each repeat begins, starting from the corners.
2. If the repeats do not meet exactly, a gap is left in the middle of the side. Close a small gap by moving the whole border in toward the center of the piece: each square it moves in takes two squares off every side, so a gap of four closes by moving in two. The piece stays the same size, with a wider band of plain background outside the border.
3. Fill a larger gap, or an odd square left over, with a small extra motif.

Corners are the hard part, and a small mirror with no frame shows how a border will turn one.

1. Draw a straight strip of the border on graph paper.
2. Stand the mirror upright on the strip so that its edge crosses the strip on the diagonal, through the corners of the squares. The strip and its reflection together show the border turning a corner.
3. Slide the mirror along to try other places: not every part of a pattern turns well.
4. When a place looks right, rule the diagonal there and copy the strip onto the other side of the line, square for square, as the mirror showed it.
5. On the chart, rule a diagonal from each corner of the outline, through the corners of the squares, and turn the border on that line.

A belt, and other pieces made to measure

A belt is a long, narrow strip, usually on 18 mesh, which a finisher mounts on leather, and the finisher sets the count. Belts are 20 to 24 stitches tall. Most finishers want extra rows of plain stitching along the top and the bottom, usually two; some ask for one or three, and some take a binding stitch, which is worked over the folded edge of the canvas, in their place.

The length to stitch is 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 cm) less than the belt size, which is measured on a belt that fits and is not the pant size. Leather covers the first and last inch or two (2.5 to 5 cm) of the stitching, so keep anything that must be seen away from the ends. Get the finisher's figures before charting: how to make a needlepoint belt has the rest, and the belt size calculator turns a belt size into a length in stitches.

Anything else that must fit, such as an insert for a ready-made item, a case or a small bag, is charted from its own measurements. Measure the opening the stitching has to fill, or get the outline and the count from whoever will make the piece up.

From chart to canvas

Count it onto blank canvas as you stitch. One square along on the chart is one thread along on the canvas: how to read a needlepoint chart gives the method. Nothing is drawn or painted on the canvas, so there is no ink or paint to come off on the thread later. There is no color under the stitches either, and bare canvas shows through any gap between them, so use thread thick enough for the mesh. Fill areas in basketweave, which covers well, and work lines one stitch wide in continental stitch: both are ways of working tent stitch, and basketweave vs continental compares the two.

On a large piece, guide threads help the counting. With light-colored sewing thread, run a line of long stitches across the canvas along the center each way, to match the center marks on the chart. Along the top and down one side of the design, mark off every tenth canvas thread in the same thread, to match the heavier lines of the graph paper. Pull each guide thread out just before the stitching reaches it, and lift any fuzz it leaves with a piece of sticky tape.

Or put the design on the canvas first, so that the stitching needs no counting. Paint each intersection the color of its square, counting from the chart. Or lay the canvas over a drawing of the full stitched size, trace the lines with a pen and paint up to them. Use acrylic paint, thinned, and a fine-tipped permanent marker, and trust neither untested: paint or ink that does not hold when wet comes off on the thread when the finished piece is blocked.

Test every paint and pen on a scrap of the same canvas: let it dry, which for paint takes a few days, wet it, blot it on white paper towel, and use it only if no color comes off. Never use a ballpoint pen, and be wary of pencil: it smudges, and graphite can come off on the thread. How to paint your own canvas gives the test and both methods in full.

The two can be mixed: paint the part with the detail in it and stitch the plain background by counting.

A tent stitch chart can also be stitched on plastic canvas, a stiff sheet of plastic with 5, 7, 10 or 14 square holes to the inch, which suits pieces with three dimensions. Plastic canvas needlepoint says how to count and cut it.

Freeform: stitching without a chart

Needlepoint does not need a chart. Begin by marking the edge of the area to be filled, with two inches (5 cm) of bare canvas outside it. The edge can be a square or a rectangle that follows the canvas threads, or a circle traced around a cup, a bowl or a jar. Mark it in pen or in a line of tent stitch. Any pen or paint used on the canvas has to pass the test under "From chart to canvas". If the piece is to be made up into something, settle that outline and its size before the first stitch. Then work in one of these ways:

• A sketch, outlined and filled. Sketch the design on paper at the size of the piece, lay the canvas over it and trace the lines. Stitch the lines first, then fill each shape. One stitch can fill them all, such as the long upright stitch of bargello: the design then comes from the shapes and not from the stitch.
• A sampler. A sampler is a piece made to show a collection of stitches and patterns. Begin with the basic stitches, then fill each new space with a decorative stitch, using compensating stitches (parts of a stitch) where a whole one will not fit. Bring in more colors as the sampler grows.
• One shape, many times. Draw one simple shape several times across the canvas and paint each copy its own color. Then fill each in any stitch.