Leonore asked:
"I have one, actually...I remembered you saying something about 25ct over one and coverage, so I went aaaall the way back to read it again (it was with Carla's questions on HAED) and since I'm currently trying to decide what count and over one ore two I should do for my first really big project, I wanted to ask if you could talk a bit about that and possible show some closeups of both God Speed and La Belle Dame for comparison?"
This is a very good question!
There are a couple of things to consider. Does the pattern have a lot of black (or equally dark color)? Are you going to be stitching on a light colored material? Remember this is going to be an issue in reverse too (light colors on a dark fabric).
Both my La Belle Dame...(LBD) and God Speed (GS) use quite a bit of black. LBD has 84,226 stitches in black and GS has 34,036. Okay, that's more than I thought...dang, that's a lot of black!
On LBD, I had already done one re-start of it so when I decided to stick with 1 strand over 1 thread (1x1), there was no way I was going to re-start again. There are bits of the fabric that show through but you do have to be fairly close to the project to see that.
With GS, I had already been working on LBD 1x1, so I decided to do 2 strands over 1. The coverage on 25ct. 2x1 is excellent! Not a trace of the fabric showing through. The downside to this is that it is more difficult to actually get the needle and floss through the fabric once you are working where there are already surrounding stitches. Yes, I do use a larger needle to help open up the holes a bit but with anywhere from 2-6 strands of floss already claiming the hole as theirs', there is a bit of a fight.
Here are a couple of closeups to help show what I mean:
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Personally, I won't be using 25ct. again for any project, HAED or otherwise. I just don't care for it. I prefer 28ct. and higher.
I don't have a closeup shot of it, but the Twilight Repose that I did was on 28ct. 1x1. The coverage was great! The fabric on that one was Ivory and it is 100% stitched. So with all of that 924 used for the background, that's all you see: 924.
My current WIPs and the pertinent information are:
- La Belle Dame Sans Merci ~ 25ct. 1x1 ~ only one with not great coverage
- God Speed ~ 25ct. 2x1
- Rapunzel (Dawe) ~ 28ct. 1x1
- The Sistine Chapel ~ 34ct. 1x1 (Yes, I'm sure it's 34ct. No, I don't know where I got such an odd count fabric.)
- PTP Floral Arrangement ~ 40ct. 1x1 half stitches 2x1 for the blending filament (or tent stitching for you "modern" stitchers)
Happy Stitching!
Stacy
6 comments:
Leonore and I were just talking about this the other day and THANK YOU for showing us the way!
Another question here is: do you ever tent stitch or do you go full cross always? Is there a place for it on BAP's or do you feel tent stitching is for those who can't handle the time it takes to go cross?
Carla, the PTP Floral Arrangement, I'm tent stitching. Of course, it's on 40ct so the coverage is sufficient tenting.
OOO, I hope you do lots of progression pictures, I'm VERY curious to see how it comes out...40 ct is so tiny!
THank you so much for answering this! I'm still not sure which way to go, but I learned a lot about what questions I have! One idea that's still in my mind though is doing 1x1 on 25ct black...does this sound like a bad idea to you? I can't really decide what scares me more, this or going over 1 on 28ct, haha :D
Leonore, doing it on black might be a bad idea simply because it's harder to see the holes on black fabric. If working on 25ct over 1 is something you are worried about in the first place, don't make it harder on yourself by adding in the difficulty of black fabric!
Hi Stacy, I see what you mean about the 25 count coverage thing. I recently tried 25 count and found I was unhappy with the coverage of 1x1 (full cross) on the dark threads. I also found that 2x1 full cross was too bulky... A happy medium to try is tenting with 3 strands! I have found this to work really well! :)
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