What is a needlepoint stitch guide?

What a stitch guide is

A stitch guide is written for one design. It walks through the canvas part by part and suggests a stitch and a thread for each. Where its writer has already stitched that canvas, the stitches and threads in it have been tried together.

A stitch guide is different from a chart. A tent stitch chart shows where each color goes, one square to a stitch. A stitch guide says how to stitch a design that is already on the canvas.

What is in one

A stitch guide holds:

• A thread and supply list, with how much of each thread to buy, and any beads.
• The parts of the design, named one by one, in a recommended order of stitching.
• A stitch for each part, with a diagram and written notes.
• Tips: how many strands to use, how to cut a particular thread, and how to handle compensation, which is fitting part of a stitch into the space left at the edge of a shape.

A guide can be long: one runs to 33 pages and 45 stitches, a size that matches the scale and detail of its canvas.

Do you need one?

No. Tent stitch will do for every part of a design, and it is where a beginner starts. See how to needlepoint.

Learn the tent stitches and how to start and end a thread first. A stitch guide can come after that.

What a guide is good for:

• You can start stitching without planning, with the threads already worked out.
• Where there is a stitched model, the guide is written to reproduce it.
• It teaches stitches and techniques as you go, like a small class.
• It can get you out of using the same few stitches every time.

A guide is a suggestion, not a rule. Take what you like and swap what you do not, and look for a similar thread among those you already own before buying the one listed. Before you swap a thread, see the thread guide for which thread fits which mesh. If you are unsure whether a guide is too hard, ask its author.

How to read the diagrams

A stitch diagram is a small map with up to four parts:

• The grid is the canvas, and it is not always drawn the same way. In one kind, each grid line is one canvas thread, so the holes are the spaces between the lines. In the other kind, each point where lines meet is a hole, and a canvas thread lies between two lines. A stitch starts and ends in a hole, so the ends of the drawn stitches show which kind a guide uses: in the spaces, or on the points where lines meet.
• The lines drawn over the grid are the stitches, at the angle and length they lie on the canvas.
• The numbers give the order. In most guides the needle comes up at the odd numbers and goes down at the even ones: up at 1, down at 2, up at 3, down at 4. Where a stitch has a number at one end only, the needle comes up at the number. Some diagrams carry no numbers; keep to labeled ones unless you are an experienced stitcher.
• Arrows show which way a stitch or a row travels.

Check whether the diagram shows the whole area or one unit of the stitch. Some diagrams show one unit only, and you repeat it across the painted area.

What can go wrong: starting one hole out. A small slip at the start can throw off every repeat after it, so count the canvas threads before the first stitch. If the result looks wrong against the diagram, stop and count again.

The stitch library on this site shows each stitch on a grid of the first kind: the pale bands are the canvas threads, and the small dark squares between them are the holes. Where a diagram there carries no numbers, the written steps on its page give the order.

How to write your own

Writing your own guide does not depend on knowing many decorative stitches. The hard part is knowing which stitch to use where, and a stitcher need not be an expert to learn it.

1. Look at the whole design before any part of it. Find the focal point, the thing the eye goes to first. Notice the colors and the mood: soft and quiet, or bold and playful.
2. Name the parts. Sky, grass, flowers, clouds. This is the list your guide will follow.
3. Ask one question of each part: what texture, or what sense of movement, would make it look like what it is? Water might want a stitch that ripples. The center of a flower might want knots.
4. Choose few. A piece does not need a decorative stitch in every area. A few well-chosen ones, used at the focal point, do more than many. Leave the rest in tent stitch. Which stitch to use lists stitches by what they suggest.
5. Check that each stitch fits its space. Some stitches are too large for a small detail and can distort it. Which stitch to use gives a test for size. Some are too open for the thread you have and can let canvas show.
6. Try each stitch first on a scrap of canvas of the same mesh, in the thread you mean to use. See the thread guide for which thread fits which mesh.
7. Write it down. Set out what a stitch guide holds: the parts in the order you mean to stitch them; for each part, the stitch and where its diagram is, the thread and the number of strands; and a list of every thread with how much of each to buy. That page is your stitch guide. The thread guide has a section on how much to buy.
8. Change it as you go. A plan made first can save ripping out later, but it is still a plan.

Start small: choose a decorative stitch for a single part of one design, and leave the rest in tent stitch.

These steps are for a painted canvas. A design worked from a chart is stitched on bare canvas, where an open stitch can look stark.