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I would really be grateful of your input. When doing half stitches for the background of the design like on my Dimension 'teddies and kittens' which way do you do the stitch? on the picture it loks as if the stitch goes top right to bottom left but when I do a full stitch this is the bottom half of my stitch, so should I do it the other way top left to bottom right so it is the same as the top half of my stitch or is it better to do it the same way as the bottom half of a full stitch to give it a different dimension.

Hope you understand what I mean but I'm not very good at explianing it Just wondered what everyone else does thanks

The way you stitch for your first cross,i would do for the half stitches.Thats what i do.

I always do my half stitches top right to bottom left and this is also the bottom half of my full cross stitch

I do not know if there is a 'right or wrong' way to do half stitches but I can say that I have stitched for two companies and now stitch for a magazine and they all said to stitch the half stitches the same way as the top arm of your cross stitch, so that all the stitches slant the same way.
Happy Stitching
Glen x

I would stitch half stitches the same direction as the top leg of my full crosses. I stitch \ then /, so all my half crosses would be /.

I agree with the two above me, do your half crosses the same way you do your top leg. I had a problem with my last project 'cus when I went to do the background I noticed the design called for stitches slanting /// and I had done my top leg on the main design \\\\ and since it was shadow and it didn't look good going \\\\ on the background I ended up with background not going the same way as my main design. It didn't turn out bad at all, it's not noticeable, but it did bother me that I didn't check before I started.

i have always done my half stitches as / which is the first (or I guess bottom leg) of my cross stitches and I have always liked the way it looks. I never thought that it looked out of line with the other stitches. It seems to me that as long as they are consistent that is what matters but I think next time I'll try it the other way and see if it looks better.

Carole

I stitch my half stitches in the direction of my top leg, but as you see people do either -- as long as you're consistent and you like the look of it, that's fine!

I do my full crosses as / then \ and until now have done my half stitches the same as the first leg of a full cross (/). It just never occurred to me to do it any differently! Having read this thread, though, I think it makes more sense to do it the same way as the top leg of a full cross stitch.

Every day's a school day!

Like (about half) of the others, I usually do my half stitch the same direction as my top stitch. Which looks weird at first and takes me a bit to get into my rhythm. It just feels backward. But in the little ornament kit I just picked up, they specify the direction of the half stitch. Its a little Christmas tree done in full stitches and the shadow is done in half stitches /////

I try to keep the half stitches going the same way as the top half of my stitches. But if the design calls to go the other way, I'll only change my half stitches.

For example, I did a stitch of a puppy and I always stitch \\\\\ then /////, but at the bottom the half stitches went \\\\. So I done my stitches the way I normally do, and just made the half stitches match the design. Nobody but you is really going to know the difference anyways.

I usually do the half stitches the way that they lay on the pattern. I guess I am the minority as It doesn't matter to me what leg of the full stitch it matches.

Thank you all for your replies it seems as if there is no rule here it's just personal choice, i naturally want to do them / and find this easier but as this is the bottom half of my stitch I have tried the other way so it matches th top but somehow seems awkward, I will have to make a decision soon

Mabel Figworthy wrote:I stitch my half stitches in the direction of my top leg, but as you see people do either -- as long as you're consistent and you like the look of it, that's fine!

I do the same as. Also agree that as long as you do all your full crosses the same way and all your half crosses the same way it really docent matter

LadyS wrote:I agree with the two above me, do your half crosses the same way you do your top leg. I had a problem with my last project 'cus when I went to do the background I noticed the design called for stitches slanting /// and I had done my top leg on the main design \\\\ and since it was shadow and it didn't look good going \\\\ on the background I ended up with background not going the same way as my main design. It didn't turn out bad at all, it's not noticeable, but it did bother me that I didn't check before I started.

I did this too once way back when and it really bothered me - enough that I undid everything. Now I'm very careful to inspect a design and plan what will work best - so I plan crosses with the top going / or \ depending upon the direction of the design (or most of it) and I plan half crosses accordingly too. Sometimes half crosses go in the direction of the botton or sometimes of the top depending upon what sort of contrast they are meant to create.

Hello-

There are times when I have stiched the half-stitches in a differrnt direction for effect. In a Michael Powell greek island design in the British mag "Cross Stitching", I found that stitching the sky (half-stitch) in another direction helped to give an almost 3-D feeling to it.

William David