One thing that’s great about line-drawn canvases (or creating your own as in my Iconographic Needlepoint Club) is that the canvases are significantly less expensive than painted canvases.
A bad thing about them is that there are not colored areas so you can get needlepoint dandruff when you use dark-colored threads. This also happens when you stitch with dark colors on the unpainted background of your canvas.
To get the best look for your canvas you will need to color. The line-drawn ornament is supposed to be a black dress. Obviously I want it to be solid black.
To get that good result, do two things:
- Color the areas using fabric markers. The color does not have to be an exact match. Nor does it need to be as dark. As long as it is darker than the white canvas and similar in color this works.
- Pick threads with lots of loft and great coverage. The instructions called for pearl cotton, which has no loft. I’m switching it to Planet Earth Silk for better coverage.
Needlepoint Dandruff happens when a stitch does not fully cover the canvas, it can happen any time. It shows up because of the significant contrast in value and color between your white canvas and your dark thread.
If the canvas and thread are similar in color, the dandruff disappears. It might still be there, but our eyes skip over it because the contrast are smaller.
In this case I’m going to use the fact that I can use a lighter color to my advantage. I have a terrible tome stitching black on black. Therefore I will color the dress dark grey. It will give me something easier to see while preventing the dandruff.
As you can see from my result, the coverage does not need to be even. That will be covered by the stitching. The critical factor is to lessen that contrast. Even the lightest values in my colored dress accomplish that.
About Janet M Perry
Janet Perry is the Internet's leading authority on needlepoint. She designs, teaches and writes, getting raves from her fans for her innovative techniques, extensive knowledge and generous teaching style. A leading writer of stitch guides, she blogs here and lives on an island in the northeast corner of the SF Bay with her family
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