What’s Wrong with this Needlepoint?

I stitched this Birds of a Feather square recently, and it has turned out badly. As you know from a previous article, I changed the colors slightly to fit in better with forecasted fashion colors. I also decided that I needed a full-coverage background stitch because I did not want to include a border.

The result, as you see in the picture above is not good. The background has greater importance than the foreground, creating a piece that is out of balance. In addition, it violates the guideline that stitches should get smaller, lower, and/or more open as they get more distant from the viewer. The Diagonal Cashmere in the background is neither smaller nor more open. If the canvas had been bigger or had more items in it, this stitch possibly could have worked as a background, but here it does not work.

Let’s look at two scenarios and see how this could be fixed.

Change the Background

This is the best choice for fixing this problem. The entire background nees to be cut out. Instead of covering the border with a full-coverage stitch, the border should be stitched in Tent.

If I still wanted the feel of full coverage but wanted something that is lower than Tent, a dense darning pattern would be the best bet. Having the Tent Stitch border would make this easy to do.

The result would be a balanced canvas because the background stitch is both lower and more open than the Tent stitched tree.

Change the Tree

Although changing the background will go a long wat to fixng the project, The tree could be made more attention-grabbing because it too is out of balance. If you look at the tree, you’ll see that the garland is the most noticeable part. That’s because it’s stitched with a metallic, while the ornaments are in more matte threads. The balance could be brought back to the tree very simply by making the ornaments more attractie. Stitching the ornaments with beads would be perfect.

If you are in a situation where you see the canvas is getting out of balance. Stop immediately. Set the canvas aside. Look at it in a couple of days to see how it can be fixed. Yes you may have to rip out stitching, but a balanced canvas is worth it.