Petit point, gros point and needlepoint

One stitch, named by its size

Petit point and gros point are both tent stitch, the simplest and most common stitch in needlepoint: a short slanted stitch that comes up through one hole of the canvas and goes down through the next hole up and to the right, over the one place where two canvas threads cross. The names are French, for small stitch and large stitch, and a third name, quick point, is for the largest stitches of all.

Which name applies goes by the mesh of the canvas, also called its count: the number of holes in an inch, and so the number of tent stitches.

The lines are loose at the edges: 16 mesh is also called gros point, and 7 mesh is called gros point as well as quick point. The two usual sizes of painted canvas fall on either side: 13 mesh is gros point and 18 mesh is petit point.

The name petit point is also kept for 22 mesh and finer alone, which is how the mesh guide uses it. So when a chart, a kit or an old piece is called petit point, look for the count: the name alone does not say how fine the work is.

Each name has a second sense, too. Petit point can simply mean tent stitch, whatever the size: in England the name tent stitch had replaced it by the early 17th century. Gros point is also a name for cross stitch.

Needlepoint itself is embroidery stitched on canvas, a stiff, open grid of cotton or linen threads: what is needlepoint covers the craft, and how to needlepoint the stitch. Tent stitch is worked in three ways, continental, basketweave and half cross, which look the same from the front and differ on the back; basketweave vs continental compares them.

What each is stitched on

Gros point is stitched on ordinary canvas, which is most often sold in 10, 12, 13, 14 and 18 mesh: all but the last are gros point. Its usual threads are Persian wool, three strands that pull apart, and tapestry wool, a single thicker strand; the thread guide says how much of each a mesh takes.

Petit point is stitched on one of three things:

• Fine canvas. Mono canvas, the usual needlepoint canvas, is a plain weave of single threads. It is petit point at 18 mesh, and it is also woven with 22 holes to the inch. Congress cloth, a finer single-thread canvas, has 24.
• Silk gauze. This is not a soft, floating cloth but a stiff, open canvas woven of fine, strong silk, its threads twisted around one another so they hardly shift. It is counted in holes to the inch as canvas is, and made from 18 count to more than 100. The counts most used run from 40 to 72, and 40 and 48 are the easiest to find.
• Penelope canvas, with its pairs of threads pushed apart, as the next section explains.

The finer the canvas or gauze, the more stitches fill the same space:

The same design also comes out smaller. A chart is a design on a grid, one square to a stitch, and a chart 72 stitches wide makes a piece 4 inches (10 cm) across on 18 mesh and 1.8 inches (4.6 cm) on 40 count gauze. Divide the stitches by the count to get inches; for 10 to 18 mesh the canvas size calculator does the sum.

Both in one piece: Penelope canvas

Penelope canvas is double-thread canvas, also called double or duo canvas: its threads are woven in pairs, and on it the two names have an exact meaning. Where a vertical pair crosses a horizontal pair, four threads meet. Stitch over that crossing as if each pair were one thread, and the result is one large tent stitch: gros point. Push the two threads of each pair apart, and the same crossing becomes four small ones, two by two, each of which takes a small tent stitch over single threads: petit point. Four petit point stitches fill the space of one gros point stitch.

That is why its size is written as two numbers. On 10/20, the most common size, the large stitches come 10 to the inch and the small ones 20. A face, a flower or a monogram can be worked in small stitches for detail, and the plain background in large ones, which go faster. Interlock canvas, whose threads are paired one way only and locked at every crossing, cannot be split like this.

To mix the two on 10/20 canvas, use two tapestry needles, the blunt needles of needlepoint: a size 18 for the large holes and a size 22 for the small ones (a higher number is a finer needle). The detail needs a chart of its own, one square to one small stitch. Work in this order:

1. Mount the canvas on stretcher bars. Taut canvas is easier to part and less likely to pull out of shape.
2. Open the canvas where the next small stitches will go: push the point of the size 22 needle into the middle of each crossing of pairs, the tight spot where the four threads meet, over a patch about an inch (2.5 cm) each way and a little beyond it. The point goes between the threads of a pair, never through a thread.
3. Nudge the threads straight, so that the holes are much the same size.
4. Stitch the small stitches of that patch, one over each small crossing. Continue patch by patch until the detail is done.
5. Fill in around the detail. A large stitch needs a whole crossing of pairs, all four of its small crossings, to itself. Wherever the detail has used one, two or three of the four, fill the rest with small stitches in the background color.
6. Work the background in large stitches over the pairs.

Persian wool keeps the background the same color in both sizes of stitch: all three strands in a large stitch, one strand in a small one. Continental and half cross are the forms of tent stitch usual on Penelope canvas.

Canvases sold with the detail already stitched and the background left to do are nearly all on Penelope canvas; see preworked canvases.

Viennese petit point

Viennese petit point is very fine petit point on silk gauze, embroidered by hand and made up into small goods: evening bags and purses, brooches, pendants, hand mirrors and little framed pictures. Flowers are the usual subject. The firms that make it are small family businesses in Vienna, some going back to the 1920s and 1930s, and Austrian petit point bags survive from the 19th century on.

How fine. The gauze is graded by its threads, and so its stitches, to the centimeter: 11, 15 and 19, which is about 28, 38 and 48 to the inch. The finest matches 48 count gauze: 19 stitches each way make 361 in a square centimeter, about 2,300 in a square inch, usually given as 2,500.

The stitching. Each stitch is a single slant over one crossing of the gauze: half of a cross stitch, which is two such slants crossed in an X. Nothing is printed on the gauze. The embroiderer counts from a chart painted by hand on gridded paper, on which every dot is one stitch. The gauze is held on a frame and worked from the middle out to the edges, often under a magnifier, in silk thread. A fine bag may take about 100 colors, some 300,000 stitches and up to half a year of stitching.

What petit point has been used for

From the 16th to the 18th century most needlepoint was petit point, on canvas of 20 to 45 holes to the inch. France of the 1600s and early 1700s used it above all for upholstery and for pole screens, which are framed panels held up on a pole and stand. Surviving pieces include a book cover of 1613, a chair of 1685 to 1695, a pole screen and a fire screen of the mid 1700s, bracelets of about 1820 and bags from about 1850 to the 1920s. For a piece of your own that may be old, see old needlepoint.

Today silk gauze is used wherever a small piece has to hold a great deal of detail: jewelry, and dollhouse rugs, pillows and pictures stitched to scale. 40 count gauze suits a dollhouse built at 1 inch to 1 foot.

What it takes

On 18 mesh canvas petit point takes nothing new: the needle, the thread and the frame usual for that mesh. Fine crewel wool, a thin wool of two plies, suits it too. Silk gauze changes each of them.

The stitch. Tent stitch suits gauze better than cross stitch, which some stitchers use: it lies smooth, and at most two stitches share a hole, where cross stitches can put four through it. Work from the chart in continental stitch, in horizontal or vertical rows, and keep basketweave, which runs in diagonal rows, for filling a background: counting from a chart along a diagonal is hard. Charts made for gauze sometimes add small decorative stitches.

A chart. Petit point on gauze is counted from a chart, and most cross-stitch charts will do. Those that suit are made of whole squares: no part stitches, which split one square between two colors; little or no backstitch, the line stitch that cross-stitch designs rely on for definition; and no blended colors, in which a strand each of two shades goes into one needle. A chart with only a few part stitches can still be used, by making each one a whole stitch in one of its colors.

A small needle. Tapestry needles stop at size 28, the finest made. Past that, gauze takes fine needles with sharp points: crewel needles, which are the ordinary embroidery needle; sharps, made for hand sewing; and beading needles, long and very thin. A needle too large pulls the gauze out of shape.

Fine thread. The thread has to pass without jamming the holes or forcing the grid out of line. Gauze takes stranded silk or cotton floss, the six-strand embroidery cotton; both pull apart into fine strands. Use two strands of silk on 28 to 32 count gauze and one strand on 34 to 49 count. Cotton floss goes the same way: two strands on 30 and 32 count, one on 40. Past 49 count, experiment to find a thread that fits: the finest gauze may take nothing thicker than machine sewing thread.

Silk holds up better, because cotton frays sooner as it is pulled through gauze; cotton makes it simpler to follow a chart's color numbers. Cut either in short lengths, about 10 inches (25 cm).

Light and magnification. The holes are easier to see than the count suggests, because the silk threads between them are so fine. Aim a strong light at the work, use a magnifier if it helps, and put something dark behind the gauze so that the holes stand out. With the right light and magnification tent stitch is workable as fine as 60 or even 72 count, though 56 or 60 is a sensible limit. Tools and supplies describes magnifiers, some with a light built in.

Something to hold it taut. Gauze worked in the bare hand pulls out of shape, and thread catches on its cut edges. Start with gauze larger than the design all around: the sewing or the tape takes up its edge, and the weave does not always match the count on the label, so a design can come out a little larger than dividing by the count suggests. It need not have the 2 to 3 inches (5 to 8 cm) left bare around a design on canvas; a smaller margin will do. There is no set figure for it: the one below is for the edge that is taped behind a card mount. Then hold it in one of two ways:

• A card mount, for a small piece. Gauze is sold in small pieces already fixed in a card mount with a window; leave it in the mount until the stitching is finished. To mount a loose piece, cut a window in mat board, the card used in picture framing, cut the gauze to overlap the window by 1/2 to 5/8 inch (1.3 to 1.6 cm) on every side, and fix it behind the window with good masking tape; or ask a needlework shop or a framer to do it. Either mount is a working one: when the stitching is done, the gauze is taken out of it to be framed or finished.
• A window of cloth, held in a hoop or tacked to a frame, for a piece of any size.

Gauze can also be tacked straight onto stretcher bars, with the tacks set very close together so that it does not sag, but a window of cloth keeps the tacks out of the gauze. To make the window:

1. Cut a piece of closely woven cotton cloth large enough for the hoop or frame.
2. Lay the gauze on the cloth with its grid in line with the weave of the cloth, and pin it.
3. Sew the gauze to the cloth all the way around, right along the edge of the gauze, with a zigzag stitch on a sewing machine or by overcasting the edge by hand.
4. Turn the cloth over. Behind the middle of the gauze, pinch the cloth up so that it stands clear of the gauze, and snip a small hole in the cloth alone.
5. Slip the point of a small pair of scissors into the hole and cut the cloth away from behind the gauze. Keep the blades against the cloth, and stop just short of the line of sewing.
6. Put the cloth in the hoop, or tack it to the frame, with the gauze inside. The tacks go into the cloth, not the gauze.
7. Cover the cut edge of the gauze, which still snags thread, with a pH-neutral art tape that leaves no residue.

A neat back. Gauze is sheer: a thread carried across the back of a bare patch shows from the front. End each thread inside the stitching it belongs to, and start with a waste knot, which lays the tail of the thread in the path of the stitches to come so that they cover it; how to start and end a thread describes it.

Is petit point right for a first piece?

For a first piece of needlepoint, no. How to needlepoint starts on 13 mesh, where the holes are easy to see, and that is gros point. Petit point on 18 mesh is the same stitch on finer canvas, with nearly twice as many stitches to fill the same space, and 40 count gauze has nearly five times the stitches of 18 mesh. A stitcher with some experience should have no trouble with gauze, eyesight allowing. For a first gauze piece choose strong colors and simple shapes: pale threads are the hardest to see against the gauze.