A Question about back stitching

[coolpenguin]

Hi. I'm saving all of the back stitching until the very end for my D Day Remembrance project (It has it's on SAL thread.)

I have a question about the back stitching. Some of it appears to be "traditional" in one hole, out the next, in a straight line. If that makes sense. But a lot of the backstitching appears to be free form over many holes. I see no other way than to combine these two styles within the project.

Thoughts? For the free form style, how many holes/squares in the aida can I safely skip? There are a lot of curves in the sampler, that's why the free form is used.

Thanks!

[Rose]

It really depends on the BS. I have gone as far as 7 stitches and then I would go back and put in a couple of couching stitches. I have gone as far as 4 without doing any couching. But it really depends on what the finished piece is going to be. Under glass for a framed piece you can go father then one that would be turned into a pillow that could have the thread catching on something.

[karen4bells]

It really depends on the BS. I have gone as far as 7 stitches and then I would go back and put in a couple of couching stitches. I have gone as far as 4 without doing any couching. But it really depends on what the finished piece is going to be. Under glass for a framed piece you can go father then one that would be turned into a pillow that could have the thread catching on something.

I'm definitely with Rose on this issue!!! I usually just to that kind of back stitching by "feel"

[rcperryls]

It really depends on the BS. I have gone as far as 7 stitches and then I would go back and put in a couple of couching stitches. I have gone as far as 4 without doing any couching. But it really depends on what the finished piece is going to be. Under glass for a framed piece you can go father then one that would be turned into a pillow that could have the thread catching on something.

I'm definitely with Rose on this issue!!! I usually just to that kind of back stitching by "feel"

I agree with Rose and Karen on this one. It depends a lot on what it will be used for. When stitching on an afghan that will be used and washed a lot I will couch a bit more often. If it is going to be framed, I might not couch at all.

Carole

[NeedleAndFork]

I've been running into that with the piece I'm currently working on too - lots of diagonals. I've decided that I'll take a single stitch over a 2x3 space, anything larger and I'll break it down somehow - it's on fairly large aida, so while it's not easy, I can pierce the size pf a stitch of needed. On evenweave or linen it would be even easier. If I were stitching this on a higher count fabric I'd probably be willing to go even further. The other thing I do is also look at what the backstitch is on, and see if a single longer stitch would be better than shorter stitches. An example would be this snowman ornament I did last year:



If you look closely, you'll see that the starts are all done with a single stitch for each side, even on the larger one where I could have broken the straight stitches into individual stitches. Doing them as a single stitch made the outline more solid and made the starts pop more than they would have if I'd broken straight lines into smaller stitches while keeping the diagonals whole. It also made them look more consistent within such a small area to be treated the same way. Another place I did something similar was the yellow lines on the scarf. I decided that I would have a consistent number of stitches - 3 - going across the scarf, even if that meant not following the pattern exactly, and I played with the tension a bit to make them look like they were stitched onto the scarf rather than an outline like the rest of the back stitch. In fact once I got going with all the diagonals on my ornaments, I stopped doing single stitches entirely unless it was to frame a border - even the horizontal and vertical lines in the pattern were stitched in longer stitches to make it look more consistent. And boy was it faster!!

I guess the point I'm making is to try it out different ways and as long as you're happy with the way it looks, you're good! While we're following a pattern when we stitch, there is often still a bit of room for interpretation.

[CeCe]

I think the previous posters here have given great advice. The first question is what is the ultimate outcome of this project going to be. If it's behind glass you don't have to worry about the "in one hole, out the next" style of BS so much.

I did run into that problem with the last project I needed to BS. At first I was going to BS it block by block, but the BS on this project was awkward because of lost of diagonals across several stitches. The piece was going to be framed, so I decided for the sake of a consistent overall look not to break up straight-aways, I couched where I felt it was needed to give the BS stability. For that project where the BS was particularly awkward I found that made it much easier, and overall it did add to the flow of the piece. I was very happy with the framed and finished project.

[Mystonique]

I don't worry too much. If "sagging" happens it's very easy and invisible to couch over it - I use either thread of the same colour or I have used invisible beading nylon to do this.