Straight stitches · Beginner
Tramme
A long thread laid horizontally across the canvas, then stitched over. It pads the stitches that cover it and helps them hide the canvas.
How to work it
Lay one long stitch
Bring the needle up at 1 and take it down at 2 in the same row of holes, one hole beyond each end of the row of stitches to come.
Make the first upright stitch
Bring the needle up at 3, one hole below the laid thread and one to the left of where it went down. Take it down at 4, two holes straight above, so the stitch stands upright across the laid thread.
Work back along the laid thread
Come up one hole to the left of where the first upright stitch came up and go down two holes straight above. Continue to the left, one upright stitch in every column of holes, stopping one hole short of the laid thread's left end.
Lay the next thread two holes lower
Bring the needle up two holes straight below the start of the first laid thread and take it down two holes straight below its end.
Cover it and share the holes above
Work back along it from right to left as before. Each stitch comes up one hole below the new laid thread and goes down two holes above, in a hole the first row already uses: always down into a shared hole, never up through it. Continue row by row.
At a glance
- Also called
- tramé, tramming
- Used for
- padding under Gobelin, tent or cross stitches; chair seats, rugs and pillows; marking a counted design on the canvas
- Coverage
- Full and slightly raised
- Direction
- Horizontal laid thread under upright stitches
- Stitch length
- Laid thread, one hole longer than its row at each end; covering stitches here, over 2 canvas threads
The stitches hide the laid thread, all but a glimpse between them and at the end of a row. Padded stitches wear longer, which suits chair seats, rugs and pillows.
The steps work it under upright Gobelin stitch on mono canvas, where the laid thread lies along a row of holes, as it does on interlock canvas. Penelope canvas, the double-thread canvas, gives the laid thread a place of its own, and tramme is usually worked there. Bring the thread up and take it down between the two threads of a horizontal pair, then stitch over it through the large holes above and below: each stitch covers the laid thread and the pair of canvas threads it lies along. There it is most often covered with half cross stitch, the tent stitch that leaves the least thread on the back of the canvas.
A laid thread can also mark a counted design. Counting from the chart, lay a thin thread of each color along the row for as far as that color runs, two canvas threads for every cross stitch. Then put the chart away and work the crosses over the threads.
Tips
- For padding, lay each row with the thread that will cover it, and work back over it without ending the thread.
- Allow extra thread: a trammed background can take more than half again as much as a plain one.
When it goes wrong
- The area is too wide for one laid stitch.
- Past about 6 inches (15 cm), lay a line of shorter stitches, each coming up through the end of the one before and splitting its thread. Vary their lengths so the joins are staggered from row to row.
Variations
- Decorative tramme. On painted canvases the name also goes to a layered stitch whose laid threads are meant to show: long base threads in every second row of holes, tied down by short accent stitches, often in groups of three.
Questions
- What is a trammed canvas?
- A canvas with its design laid on it by hand in horizontal stitches of wool, each in its own color, in place of paint or print. Work tent stitch over each laid stitch in the matching wool, which usually comes with the canvas. The background is often left bare, to be worked in any color.