Scrappy, Stitchy, Simple: Free Scrap Bag Needlepoint Stitch Guide

This month’s scrap bag project takes a different approach. Instead of starting from scratch, this project begins with a painted canvas. Tomorrow we’ll have a gallery of some great stash-busting canvases, along with tips on what to look for. Today we’ll have the stitch guide for this Mindy canvas, pictured in progress.

Material List

• Mindy round canvas A-20
• 1-3 colors black thread, model used Silk Lame, Kreinik #12, and Petite Very Velvet
• white thread for border, model uses Trio
• assorted scrap threads in non-metalic gold, blue, yellow-green, blue-violet, and blue-green

Step-by-step Instructions

The wonderful scrappy squares and rectangles background of this canvas drew me to it. We’ll emphasize that by using plenty of different threads. It’s hard to tell but the background is in a grid. This will make it easier to stitch, although I parked threads often in stitching it.

Begin by stitching the three words in Tent Stitch. Because I was near the end of three packages of thread, I stitched each word with a different thread. You don’t need to. Because the words are black, the thread texture is minimized, so what could be just one too many things isn’t a problem.

Stitch the white border in T Stitch, below, using your white thread.

The blocks are stitched next, block by block in columns or rows, alternating between regular and reverse direction for each block. If you are good at counting, start with the row just above the middle “stitch;” it has the most complete blocks. If you are not good at counting, start at one edge and stitch towards the other.

In any case you may want to use your threads in a second nearby block of the same color. If this is the case, park your thread in the margins until you need it again.

Most of the blocks are 4 threads square. That means they will be either Scotch, below top, or Reverse Scotch, below bottom. Often these are interrupted. When the blocks are this way, keep the stitch direction the same even when the stitch is abbreviated.