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I just bought my first pattern outside of my little beginner's kit! It's a santa clause I'm going to frame and give to my boyfriend's mother.

I'm ordered the pattern yesterday, next stop: supplies! and this is where I get a little shaky. The pattern description says: Model stitched on 30 count 18th Century Brown from R&R

I'm not entirely sure what that means... is it linen? i've never stitched on linen before! Can I do this on something I'm more comfortable with (aida), or will it not look as good?

Also, how do I know what size to get? My kit did all that work for me. Can I determine overall size from the stitch count (60W x 80H)?

Thank you all!

30ct is an evenweave -- probably linen in this case, although I don't know R&R. On it, you would generally stitch "over two", which means that you end up with 15 stitches to the inch. So yes, you could use aida, 14ct would end up a little bigger and 16ct would end up a little smaller, and of course it looks different, but there is no reason why you couldn't stitch it on aida (perhaps a nice hand-dyed one0 if that is what you prefer!

Good luck with your first non-kit!

Thank you Mabel! I do eventually want to try working on evenweave, but since this is going to be a gift, I'd hate to have it look sloppy!

And dyed aida sounds lovely! Thanks for the idea!

I use this Fabric Calculator to figure out what size fabric I will need for different counts.

Thanks Maggie! What a useful tool!

I tried entering 60W, 80H and put in 16 count for the fabric (is that right, 16 count Aida would be 16 threads per inch?

anashenwrath wrote:Thanks Maggie! What a useful tool!
I tried entering 60W, 80H and put in 16 count for the fabric (is that right, 16 count Aida would be 16 threads per inch?

Yep you're right!

Yes, that's right -- or if you like mental arithmetic you can find out by dividing the design's stitch count by your fabric's count (handy if you happen to be away from the computer):

so as your design is 60w x 80h and your fabric is 16ct, the size would be 60/16=3¾" wide and 80/16=5" high

Also don't forget to add an extra few inches on all sides so that it can be framed. Anywhere from 2 to 3 inches extra per side.

so 3 3/4w X 5h if you add 2 inches per side you woud need 7 3/4w X 9h.

R&R is R&R Reproductions, a very classy outfit from the States that specialises in hand dyed linen for samplers. And not your ordinary hand-dyeing: they started out, I'm told, because they couldn't find a fabric to exactly match a 19th century sampler they were reproducing... so they did it themselves.

thanks maggie for this useful suggestion xxxxxx