When to use full and half stitches

[janxharris]

When doing a landscape type picture with land in the foreground and sky in the distance is it normal practice to do the sky areas in single strand half stitches and the land in two strand full cross stitches?

[geekishly]

Some patterns do call for half stitch for the background - whether with one or 2 strands. It all depends on the effect the pattern designer wants. But full cross stitches in both the background and foreground are very common, too.

[Lessa54]

As geekishly says, some patterns will be specifically charted for either full cross background or half cross background in varying strands of floss. However, there are no rules and if you prefer half cross background even though it's charted full cross, then go ahead and change it Equally, if you prefer full cross, you can always change half cross to full cross - we promise we won't tell

[janxharris]

Many thanks all