How to paint your own needlepoint canvas

What you are making

A painted canvas tells the stitcher which color goes on each intersection, the crossing of two canvas threads that one tent stitch covers. How to needlepoint shows the stitch. When every intersection carries one clear color, the canvas is stitch-painted, and painting it that way is stitch painting. A canvas painted more freely leaves some intersections for the stitcher to decide.

The design goes onto blank canvas in one of two ways:

• From a chart, the design drawn as a grid of colored squares. On a chart for tent stitch each square stands for one intersection, not for a hole, and you count the squares onto the canvas in paint.
• From a drawing or a print-out laid under the canvas: you trace the lines, then paint.

Painting takes the counting out of the stitching, but it is not required. Any chart, such as the geometric patterns here, can be stitched by counting onto bare canvas, and a background that will be one color can be left unpainted. Canvas with no paint on it shows wherever the thread does not cover it, so work it in a stitch that covers fully, such as basketweave, a form of tent stitch.

What you need

• Blank mono canvas, the plain weave of single threads that hand-painted canvases are on. Its mesh is the number of holes to the inch. For a first canvas choose 13 mesh, which has bigger holes and fewer intersections to paint than 18 mesh: see canvas and mesh sizes. Buy enough to cut off a scrap for the test.
• The chart, printed on paper, or the drawing, and the threads you will stitch with.
• Acrylic paint for each thread color, white acrylic paint for mistakes, and a thinning medium, a liquid like the paint with no color in it, if you will not thin with water.
• Small synthetic brushes. For single intersections, round ones in sizes 0, 2/0 and 3/0, which is the finest of the three and also written 000. For filling, a flat brush with short bristles, sold as a bright, in about size 6 or 8. Sizes differ from maker to maker, and canvas wears brushes out fast, so buy inexpensive ones.
• A small dish for thinning and mixing each paint, and a cup of water for rinsing the brush.
• White paper towels, for drying the brush and for the test.
• A toothpick, for clearing wet paint out of a hole, and a tapestry needle, the blunt needle used for needlepoint, for a hole that has dried shut.
• Thick paper or cardboard to put under the canvas, because paint goes through the holes.
• Masking tape, and scissors sturdy enough for canvas.
• A fine-tipped permanent marker, if you will trace.

Make the test first: it takes a few days.

Cut and bind the canvas

To find the size of a charted design on canvas, divide its squares each way by the mesh: 72 squares on 18 mesh come to 4 inches (10 cm). The canvas size calculator does the sum.

Canvas has a grain. The selvage, the edge that was finished in the weaving, runs along the lengthwise threads, and those threads should run up and down the design. Before you cut, turn the canvas so that the selvage is at the left or the right of the design. A cut piece may have no selvage, so ask the seller to mark the selvage side when the canvas is cut.

Cut the canvas with at least two inches (5 cm) of margin on every side of the design. Then bind each cut edge with masking tape folded over it, half on the front and half on the back, so that the edge cannot fray or catch thread, and mark the top on the tape.

Which paint

Use acrylic paint. Any acrylic that passes the test below will do, but the two kinds differ in how well they cover.

• Artists' acrylics sold as fluid or soft body cover better. They are thin enough to use from the bottle, and they mix to any color.
• Craft acrylics, in small bottles from craft stores, tend to cover less well, can fade and are tricky to mix. Buy each one as close as possible to the color wanted.

Match each paint to its thread. Paint can show between the stitches, and it shows least when it is close to the thread over it, in color and in lightness. Choose or mix each paint near its thread, and plainly different from the paint beside it. Acrylic usually dries a little darker than it looks wet, so mix a color a little paler than the one you are after, and let a dab dry on the scrap before you judge it.

Thin it. The paint should be about as thin as cream, because thick paint clogs the holes. Thin it with a few drops of water, or with the paint maker's thinning medium, which keeps the color stronger than water does. Do not thin it so far that it soaks the canvas: canvas that gets very wet loses sizing, the finish that keeps it stiff.

Which pens

A tracing pen is for outlines only, and the stitches cover its lines.

• Use a fine-tipped permanent marker and a light hand: a thick dark line is difficult to hide under thread. Black will do where dark thread will cover the line. Under pale thread, use a marker in the color of that thread.
• Never use a ballpoint pen: its ink is among those that run. Pencil smudges.
• Acrylic paint pens, also sold as acrylic markers, hold acrylic paint, and a beginner may find them easier and quicker than a brush. A paint pen, or any marker used to color the canvas in place of paint, has to pass the same test as a paint.

Tools and supplies says more about pens for marking canvas.

Test before anything touches the canvas

Finished needlepoint is dampened for blocking, and it may one day need cleaning. Color that does not hold then comes off on the thread stitched over it. A label is no proof: a marker sold as permanent can still bleed, an acrylic paint can fail to set, and a marker can hold on one canvas and run on another, because canvases differ in the kind and amount of their sizing.

1. On a scrap of the same canvas, paint a solid patch of each paint, thinned as you will use it, and scribble firmly with each pen.
2. Let it dry: ink for 10 to 15 minutes, paint for a few days. A very thin coat of acrylic can feel dry in seconds and still take a few days to dry all the way through.
3. Wet the scrap thoroughly under cold running water.
4. Lay it on a white paper towel and blot it hard with another.
5. Look at both towels. If any color shows, do not use that paint or pen on this canvas. If none shows, it has passed, for canvas from this piece and no other.

From a chart: count and paint

Any tent stitch chart will do, including the free easy patterns here. Print it and count from it: the chart PDFs on this site are not printed at the size of the stitching, so do not trace over them. These steps do not fit a bargello chart, on which a square is one canvas thread, not an intersection: bargello is counted onto bare canvas.

1. Find where to begin. At a corner, measure the margin you allowed, two inches (5 cm) or more, in from each of the two canvas edges nearest that corner of the chart. The intersection nearest to where the two measures meet is the corner square of the chart, which on a shaped design may be a blank square. To begin at the center instead, follow how to read a chart.
2. Lay the canvas on the thick paper and count from the starting intersection to the first colored square.
3. Take a little paint on the tip of a round brush and touch it to that intersection, so that it colors the bump where the two threads cross and leaves the holes beside it clear. One dot is one square.
4. Work one area of color at a time, dotting the intersections around its edge first. Count squares on the chart and the same number of threads on the canvas, always from an intersection that is already painted. On most charts a heavier line at every tenth square helps with a long run, and a ruler laid across the canvas keeps the eye on one row of threads.
5. Fill inside the dotted edge with the flat brush, until every thread in the area is colored, on the crossings and between them, with every hole still open.
6. Cross off on the paper chart what you have painted.
7. Wash and dry the brush before the next color, and let one color dry to the touch before you paint the color beside it, so that the two do not run together.

If you paint a wrong intersection, let it dry, cover it with white acrylic paint, let that dry too, and paint it again. Do not use correction fluid, which discolors in time and flakes off.

From a drawing or a print-out: trace, then paint

1. Draw or print the design at the size it will be stitched, in lines dark and thick enough to see through the canvas.
2. Tape the paper to a table and tape the canvas over it, with its threads running straight up and down the design, so that nothing in the design leans. If the lines are hard to see, tape both to a bright window or lay them on a light box.
3. Trace with the pen that passed the test, in the thinnest line it will make.
4. Lift the canvas off, lay it on the thick paper and paint up to the lines. A line is the edge between two colors and gets no color of its own: where it runs across an intersection, give that intersection one color or the other.

Graph paper at canvas scale. The graph paper tool prints a sheet ruled with one square for each intersection at 10, 12, 13, 14 or 18 mesh, and a heavier line every ten squares. Print it at 100 percent, with no "fit to page", and measure the bar at the foot of the sheet: it must be exactly one inch (2.54 cm) long. A design colored in on its squares is a chart at the size of the stitching: count from it as from any chart.

For a design no more than a few inches across, the sheet can go under the canvas in place of counting. Tape the sheet down on all four sides. Shift the canvas until a crossing of threads sits in the middle of each square, with the ruled lines running under the rows of holes, and tape it along one edge only, so that it can be lifted. Give each intersection the color of the square beneath it, and lift the canvas now and then while the paint is wet, to clear a filled hole and to see the sheet. Over a longer distance paper and canvas drift apart, because printers scale a little and woven canvas is not perfectly regular, so count.

On Letter paper the ruled part is about 7 1/2 by 9 3/4 inches (19 by 25 cm), and on A4 it is a little narrower and taller. The sheets carry no marks for joining, so draw a larger design across several and count from one to the next.

From a photograph

The photo tool turns a picture into a chart for tent stitch, on your own device. Choose the mesh (10, 12, 13, 14 or 18), the width of the finished piece in inches, and the most thread colors the chart may use, from 2 to 30. The chart can be from 10 to 300 stitches wide, and the tool lists its thread colors. Save the chart, print it, and paint from it square by square, as above.

Choose a picture that is easy to make out, and allow few colors: more colors make a more mottled chart, and each one is another paint to match and test. Small parts tend to come out short of detail, so correct them on the printed chart before you paint.

Keeping every stitch clear

• Shading. Paint brushed in a blend across the threads puts two colors on one intersection, and the stitcher has to pick. To keep the canvas stitch-painted, shade in steps: every intersection gets one of the thread colors, whole, as every square on a chart has one.
• Holes. Too much paint on the brush fills the holes. Clear a filled hole with the toothpick right away, while the paint is wet. Open a hole that has dried shut with the tapestry needle, pushed in and worked around.
• Coverage. Thinned paint is more see-through. Where a color looks thin, let it dry and give it a second thin coat. Do not load one coat thickly.
• Doubt. If you painted from a chart, keep it: it settles any intersection that is still unclear when you come to stitch.

Drying, and when to stitch

Leave the painted canvas lying flat, unrolled, at ordinary room temperature until the paint is dry all the way through: give it the same few days as the test patch. Do not hurry it with heat, which can blister or burn the paint. Nothing more is done to the canvas. Once dry it is stitched like any painted canvas, in the hand or on a frame.

Printing on canvas

Do not put canvas through a home printer, and do not iron a transfer onto it. Paint the canvas, or have it printed.

• Through a home printer. Many home printers are not built for a material as thick and rough as canvas, which can jam or damage them. The ink can smear, the design can be no bigger than the printer's sheet, and the print seldom lands squarely on the intersections. Dye ink, one of the two kinds used in inkjet printers, can bleed in water; the other kind, pigment ink, resists it.
• Iron-on transfer paper leaves a thin plastic film on the canvas, which stiffens it and makes it harder to stitch, and some transfers fade.
• Iron-on transfer pencils are made for cloth: a design traced on paper with one is ironed onto the cloth, and the smoother the cloth the better. Canvas is an open grid, so trace onto it with a pen that has passed the test instead.

A print is color on canvas like any other mark, whether it comes from an inkjet printer, a laser printer or a copier, or is pressed on with heat. If you print a canvas anyway, wet a printed scrap of the same canvas, as in the test above, before any stitching goes into it.

Having a canvas printed. Some services print a single canvas from a customer's picture: how to get a custom canvas covers ordering one. Canvas is not perfectly regular, so printed color can sit badly on the threads, leaving it unclear which color an intersection should be, and inks can run together and look muddy. Before ordering, ask the service how it lines the print up with the canvas threads and whether the print can be wetted for blocking. A bought canvas comes with no scrap to test, so before blocking one, make the drop-of-water test in how to block needlepoint, on the piece itself.