Fabrics in Needlepoint – Gingham and More

Updated January 16, 2023.

My Internet decided to take the weekend off & I don’t trust it enough to get out a new post. I’m rerunning this oldr post and will have a post about new products Thursday.

In a previous post, we looked at how to create versions of three tweeds in needlepoint stitches. Today we’ll look at four additional fabrics that can easily be rendered in needlepoint.

Denim is, like tweed, woven with different colors for the warp and weft. We don’t see the warp color, usually white, as much as feel it because denim is woven in a twill pattern. Twills have the weft threads going over more than one warp thread.

Stitching twills effectively can be hard to do, so I get the same effect by stitching Tiny Twill, below. This stitch has straight stitches going across one thread of canvas, a technique that can be unstable on mono canvas. Stitch it so that there is maximum coverage on the back. Make the stitch in vertical rows, a row of horizontal stitches followed by a row of vertical stitches. Stitch all the rows with horizontal stitches in columns making the stitches from left to right and going up the row. These stitches make a column of single stitches with the needle going out of the canvas on the left and going into the canvas on the right. Stitch all the rows with vertical stitches in rows making the stitches from bottom to top and going down the row.

To get the feel of denim, which is not uniform in color, I use Rainbow Tweed from Rainbow Gallery. This thread comes in several shades of blue. Because it’s a blend, it is not uniform in color. It also has that soft feel of old jeans. The jeans on the trick-or-treater pictured here use this thread and stitch.

Corduroy is one of the easiest fabrics to render in needlepoint. In fact there is a stitch called Corduroy Stitch, below, that does a great job. To get the different types of corduroy, vary the width of the column by changing the length of the stitches.

Just using this stitch will make an effective corduroy, but you can make the stitch look more realistic by using two threads. Pick a matte cotton, such as a Sashiko thread, for the narrower columns. This will look like the areas between the ribs on the fabric. Use wool or another fuzzy thread for the other columns. This will look like the cut pile of corduroy’s ribs.

Gingham is actually a plaid where the stripes are all even in width and alternate between two colors. You can see that because the lines alternate between white-lighter color-white and lighter color-color-lighter color, with every other block throughout a lighter color that is halfway between white and the color.

That makes gingham very easy to stitch. As long as you follow the color pattern and use a stitch that is square, gingham can be made to different scales. That characteristic matches the fabric as well because you can buy gingham with checks in sizes about 1/16″ to 1″ checks.

The stitch diagram, below, show Gingham Mosaic. By changing the size of the stitch, you can make the checks bigger or smaller.

Damask is a fabric that’s very easy to create in needlepoint. If you want to create damask fabrics or patterns, check out this post. Pretty much any repeating pattern could be made as a damask. If you want the “fabric” to be a print, stitch in two colors instead of two textures.