Fabric Inspiration for Needlepoint – Tweed

Updated July 14, 2023.
I love fabric almost as much as I love needlepoint. And although it’s more difficult to render prints as needlepoint many woven patterns can easily be turned into easy and compelling needlepoint patterns using simple stitches and only a few threads.

“Tweed” is a general name for a roughly woven wool fabric. Today we’ll look at replicating three common tweeds in needlepoint stitches. Tomorrow we’ll look at some other fabrics.

Today we’ll look at easy ways to mimic specific kinds of tweeds.

Basic Tweed: These fabrics are woven with one color on the warp threads and a second color on the weft threads. This creates an extremely tiny check.

A great way to convey tweed is to stitch Four-way Continental in two colors. Not only will this create the check, but because it is slightly harder to stitch in two colors than in one, it will create a rougher texture. You will find stitching easier if you use a thread slightly thinner than the one you normally use. Stitching with two needles also makes it easier.

All stitches that slant in the same direction will be the same color, as in the diagram below.

Houndstooth: Houndstooth is made from interlocking checks that have “wings” on them. The wings look like a dog’s tooth, hence the name.

Like many other tweeds, one color in this pattern is white. But being a more fashionable pattern, the color in houndstooth can be almost any color where the pattern is distinct. Unlike other tweeds, you can also sometimes find houndstooth in fabrics such as silk.

Houndstooth is made with Tent Stitch only. The checks can be made any size, but need to retain the interlocked pattern. When stitching this, use two needles, one for each color, completing one complete check before moving to the next. A stitch diagram for houndstooth is below.

Herringbone: Herringbone tweed is diagonal lines that alternate in direction, like Alternating Gobelin, and alternate in color between white and a second color. The second color is grey, navy, brown, or black most of the time.

Although the colors alternate, they do not line up in rows of a single color. You can see this in the stitch diagram below.

Yes, you could use Herringbone Stitch with alternating colors for each stitch, but the changing colors would take away from the woven look of this stitch.

A better choice is Alternating Gobelin. In the diagram below, you can see how the colors and direction alternate.