A Guide to Stretcher Bars

There are two ways to stitch needlepoint. You can hold your needlepoint in your hand, or you can stretch it on something to keep it taut. For my first ten years of stitching, I stitched only in hand. I switched to bars for many reasons. Initially, it was because I had been doing lots of cross stitch and I had become used to the tighter fabric in the embroidery hoop. I was also stitching during my commute and I found that it was easier to keep the needlepoint steady on a frame. These days I only use frames.

If you don’t put your needlepoint on some kind of frame it’s called stitching “in hand.” Many stitchers do lovely needlepoint in hand and most needlepoint can be done this way.

However, at some point, most stitchers move to using a frame. Frames come in many styles and exist to keep the needlepoint canvas taut as you stitch.

The most important thing to remember about needlepoint frames is the A FRAME IS NOT AN EMBROIDERY HOOP. You cannot use embroidery hoops for needlepoint, no matter what some people say. First, your margins on canvas are too small for your design to fit into a hoop and still be able to stitch. That’s because needlepoint canvas is expensive. It’s much more expensive than fabric. Second, needlepoint stitches are crushed when caught in the hoop and cannot be fixed. Cross stitches and embroidery are done on larger pieces of fabric and are embellishing the fabric, also called the “ground.” Needlepoint stitches are thicker because in needlepoint you are actually creating a fabric.

Needlepoint stretcher bars are also not artist’s stretcher bars. Both perform the same function, i.e. stretching the canvas and making it taut. Artist bars are wider, more than twice the width of standard bars. They are also deeper and come together with mitered corners instead of dovetailed corners. This makes them very heavy to hold. Remember painters don’t hold the canvas, they put it on an easel.

Although art stretcher bars do come in much longer widths, I can’t see practical ways to stitch needlepoint stretched this way. For large pieces, most needlepointers stitch in hand, use scroll bars, or find a rug frame.

To frame needlepoint canvas most stitchers use needlework stretcher bars. These come in a few widths and stretcher bars of the same width are usually interchangeable.

Mini stretcher bars, pictured at the top of the article, are about 3/8″-1/2″ wide. They are lighter in weight and often used for smaller pieces or pieces with less stitching. Being the thinnest bars, they are also lighter. Many stitchers, including me, prefer this lighter weight.

Regular stretcher bars, pictured above, are about 3/4″ wide. These were the original stretcher bars for needlework.

Stretcher bars are sold in pairs in lengths from 4″ to 36″, sold in whole inches. They have dovetail joints on the ends.

There are also specialty stretcher bar systems. The most popular are Ever-tite stretcher bars, above. These bars are 1″ wide and can be adjusted to keep the needlepoint stretched using a special tool. They are hard to find these days.

Another specialty stretcher bar system is the adjustable bars from FA Edmonds, above, reviewed here. They are about the width of regular stretcher bars, but they have long oblong holes in them. You fasten them with wing nuts & can adjust their widths. They come in four lengths. They are not quite as sturdy as the other kinds of bars.

Stretcher bars are bought in lengths to match the size of the canvas. To find the size of bars to buy, measure two adjacent sides of your canvas. This tells you the sizes of the pairs to buy.

No matter what kind of bars you buy, you must have all four bars of the same type. Different types do not fit together.

To attach your canvas to the stretcher bars, put the canvas on top of the bars. Most stitchers put the canvas face up. Some stitchers put the canvas face0down. When you do this it is called “stitching in the well.”

Using thumbtacks, tack the center of each side onto the bars. Then tack the corners, except tack on either side of the corners on Ever-tites. Then fill in tacking every 1-2 inches, on opposite sides, until the canvas is tacked all around, above.

You can use brass tacks (often called needlework tacks) which are very sharp, quilter’s tacks, which have large heads and longer shafts, hardware store tacks, or a staple gun for attaching. if you have poor hand strength, a tool, such as a Cor-jac (reviewed here) can be used to place the tacks. You can al use a small hammer to drive in tacks that did not go in completely

Do not use tacks from the office store. Usually, these are made in two pieces and are too flimsy for this task.

I prefer tacks to staples because I like to be able to remove the tacks, pull the canvas, and retack as the canvas stretches out. As you stitch canvas relaxes as the sizing is broken. Staples can make your canvas hard to adjust.

I buy lots of tacks and keep them in a plastic bin. I throw out any tack that is bent.

An alternative to stretcher bars is scroll bars. These systems have rollers for the top and bottom and rigid sides. I’ll cover them in Thursday’s article.