A See-through Statement

Stitching glass is always a problem. How do you convey looking through it at the needlepoint behind?

The ribbon threads out here for this require long stitches and that might not work for your piece. Thin threads might need to be plied up.

I find it frustrating and, I’m sure, so do you.

But, thanks to my friend Jane, I’ve found a great solution — Nordic Gold from Rainbow Gallery in white. It’s translucent and gives thin, but adequate, coverage with one strand on 18 mesh.

So I decided to try it and you see the results above. This vintage HP Designs canvas turned out to be a perfect test. In two quadrants, you see half of a T Stitch (right and left), in one completed T Stitch (top) and in one the bare canvas (bottom). You can also do Basketweave and still have the painting come through.

You can see the painting through the stitches even with completed T Stitch. I’m not entirely happy with the results though. Whenever you stitch with a translucent thread details will be obscured and colors will be dimmed. If this is a problem on your canvas consider making the “glass” a piece of sheer fabric and appliqueing it by stitching a border along the edge,

I see a few areas that pose gotchas for this technique.

Fine details – Look at the leaf on the right, it has some thin green lines as details. These are partially obscured by the stitches. They are too thin to show through the translucent thread. Use the fabric technique here.

Low Contrast – In the yellow background there are single intersection painted white, representing falling snow. They hardly can be seen in the bare canvas. In the stitched canvas they can be obscured when a stitch goes over them. As you can see though, the more open Half T allows them mostly to shine through. If you have low contrast and want to preserve as much of it as possible, use stitches with lighter coverage.

High Contrast – The leaves are black. Stitching over them with a white thread made the individual stitches stand out too much. The leaf near the center which has T Stitch over it looks much better. If you have a high contrast situation, use stitches with fuller coverage.

This is a great technique opening lots more ways to stitch glass. It’s something even beginner stitchers can do and Nordic Gold is a great bargain in thread with 25 yards per card. This is going to become my go to method for stitching glass.

You should try it yourself.