Made of clear plastic or wood, corner gauges are more commonly used by other kinds of stitchers, but they can also be useful to needlepointers.
What is a corner gauge?
Designed to help you find corners in several sizes, corner gauges are most often 3″ squares. In addition to 3″. they can also make 1″ and 2″ squares. Mine, from Blue Ribbon Designs, is clear acrylic. Others can be laser-etched or decorative wood. The wooden ones have lines showing the smaller squares and holes at the corners of each of the small squares.
Mine has rulers on two sides, one marked in quarter inches, the other in eighths. Other ones have knitting needle sizes. The wooden ones are often decorated prettily.
I picked mine because I like the clear with its ability to see the canvas beneath it.
Ways to Use one
If you stitch charted projects, you’ll often see in the instructions “Begin stitching 2 inches from the corner.” Use the corner gauge to find this point. To do this put the inside corner of the 2″ square in the corner of the canvas. Mark the outer corner with an extra-fine marker made for fabric. You can start stitching from there.
You see another use in the picture at the top of the article. Sometimes you want to know how big the margins are on your canvas. I put the outside corner at the corner of the canvas. You can see the margin is 2″ because the 1″ square is in the corner of the canvas.
My favorite use is to create margins for canvases that are “floating in space,” below.
Unless you need margins bigger than 3″, you can use the coener gauge to give your needlepoint margins. I have usually counted threads to do this, but I love this idea!
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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