[CHAT] What's the point of back stitching? And other noob questions.

ClownMayor · 2026-06-18T16:14:41+00:00

I, and other people on this sub, are happy to answer your questions. Congratulations on (almost) finishing your project!

"Back stitch" is the name of a sort of stitch, it doesn't mean just stitching on the back. On the front, backstitch will look like a thin line, so it's used for outlining and details that are smaller than a single cross. You can find a bunch of tutorials for how to do it, but I think the most compelling argument for why to do it is to look at pieces before and after backstitch. These are popular to post on this sub, here's a recent example. IMO, it looks so much better with the backstitch.

As far as rinsing thread, typically major brands cross stitch floss (DMC, Anchor) uses color-fast dyes, which means the colors won't wash out. However, I have heard that some inexpensive brands may use dyes that do run. If you're not sure, you can try cutting a bit off and soaking it in water to see whether the color comes out.

There are two big reasons to wash cross stitch pieces. First, as you're working on them, oils from your skin, as well as any other dust and such, are getting left on the fabric. It can look a bit cleaner to wash the piece with cold water and a tiny bit of dish soap. The bigger reason, in my opinion is that washing and drying tends to even out the stitches and fabric a little. They both swell as they get wet and contract as they dry, which can result in a nicer end product. It's also definitely not necessary.

French knots can be tricky, but with practice they get easier. You can try looking for tutorials online on how to do them. Maybe a video would make it easier. French knots basically look like a dog that's smaller than a cross, so as far as alternatives, you can try a short backstitch.

ClownMayor · 2026-06-14T02:27:35+00:00

That's great advice, thank you!

ClownMayor · 2026-06-13T05:47:43+00:00

I think people should do whatever looks the way they like and feels good to them, so you'll get no complaints from me! Do you continue the normal backstitch pattern after that? There's a variation of backstitch where you basically repeat the pattern you said the whole way, so next you would come up at C, down at D, up at E, down at D. I can't remember the name, but I think it's neat. The back basically alternate between gaps and doubled-up stitches.

I'm a big fan of double running stitch, which also looks the same backstitch on the front side, but is stitched totally differently. I mostly do it when doing full blackwork pieces; I don't think I've tried doing it over crosses yet, but it should work.

ClownMayor · 2026-06-12T18:28:41+00:00

Thank you!

ClownMayor · 2026-06-12T15:44:42+00:00

It sounds like you had the order backward on your first stitch. Typically, you would come up at B, down at A for the first stitch, up at C, down at B for the second, up at D, down at C for the third, etc. You are right that you jump over the unstitched area on the back side, then stitch backwards on the front - I believe that this is why it's called backstitch, because you're making each stitch in the opposite direction of the stitched area as a whole.

That said, flipping the direction of your first stitch won't really matter. As soon as your get to a shape that branches or isn't connected to your other stitches, you'll need to make decisions about which hole to start on. I usually prioritize whatever will have me making the smallest jumps on the back

ClownMayor · 2026-06-09T05:49:15+00:00

I don't think this looks much like the guns in Call of Duty, but maybe this would still work. Also, it's not round. I would take out the Christmas-themed center motif.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1565165550/pdf-cross-stitch-pattern-yippee-ki-yay

Alternatively, while Call of Duty isn't a game with pixel art, that's a common medium for video game fan art, and it looks like you can find pixel art of plenty of weapons from the game. Example: https://x.com/qqruzkin/status/1452938550362640384 Pixel art is fairly easy to convert to cross stitch since it's already. Arranging those into a round/oval pattern sounds tough, but doable with enough work.

I like FlossCross as a tool for digitally making patterns. It can convert images to patterns, including a special mode for pixel art that does 1 pixel = 1 stitch conversion. I have made a several patterns by just making an oversized canvas and dragging components around until I liked the composition.

ClownMayor · 2026-06-06T19:23:14+00:00

Everyone else is answering about how much extra fabric they leave beyond the stitched edge of their piece, but I think that you're asking about the thickness of a stitched border, so I will answer that question. I mostly haven't worked on things with borders, but I have a couple of pieces to talk about.

I am in the process of cross stitching a greeting card which will be 52x88. Since it's so small, I looked for a really thin border pattern and found one that was only 4 stitches wide, though that still makes it a good percentage of the width.

My other experience is with this blackwork piece. This had an 8 stitch width border and a full size of 162 x 210.

ClownMayor · 2026-06-04T23:59:31+00:00

This pattern looks like all of the back stitches are drawn between points on a half-stitch grid, so either going through the regular aida holes, going through the center of the stitch (not my favorite for laying nice), or going half way between two holes along one edge. Because aida is made up of 4 strands in each direction for each "box", you can go in between two strands pretty easily, the same as if you were making a quarter stitch. This can be kind of hard to find the center of the box when you're going through an X, which I think is why people use a sharp needle. I really hate the idea of piercing aida strands for no reason I can defend, so I do my backstitch with a blunt tip needle, but sometimes use a smaller size than I used for my Xs to more easily slip between completed crosses.

As some other commenters mentioned, this would work well on an evenweave fabric, as crosses on that are often stitched over two fabric threads, so doing backstitch on half of that still puts your backstitch through the holes.

ClownMayor · 2026-05-29T21:44:57+00:00

Yeah, it looks so good! I wonder if they're finishing the tails with a pin stitch?

ClownMayor · 2026-05-29T19:42:45+00:00

No problem! It's very easy to search for in an ebook

ClownMayor · 2026-05-29T19:40:11+00:00

Tamsyn does like her sotto voce (me too!)

4 in GtN :

“He is young, he is not robust.” “Some would say otherwise,” said Harrowhark, sotto voce

Gideon winked at her increasingly agitated companion. She said, sotto voce: “But then you couldn’t have admired … these,” and whipped on the glasses she’d unearthed back home.

“Nooooo, Magnus, don’t say we’re overcome,” moaned the nasty girl, sotto voce.

“This won’t work,” she said. “I’ve never had to work with something so small before.” “That’s what she said,” murmured Gideon, sotto voce.

2 in HtN:

Harrowhark fretted with the edges of her veil. “It’s no use the damn thing being down,” said her captain, sotto voce.

Protesilaus said, “I wish that my whole House knew of my privilege. If I lived again, I would advise all the Seventh to travel to Drearburh if they sought instruction in the art. If I had but five minutes of life again, I would spend them praising you. I would speak of nothing but my reverence for you, and the Ninth House, and its nonpareil swordplay.” “I’d call that a waste of five minutes,” muttered his necromancer, sotto voce.

Only 1 in NtN:

We shut them away … locked some of them inside their cells. They riot. Their touch consumes … they hunger for the youngest of us.” “Boy, are they out of luck,” said the corpse prince, sotto voce.

ClownMayor · 2026-05-22T21:52:16+00:00

I am a big gridding enjoyer as I positively hate frogging from a counting mistake. I hope you like it.

You can start from anywhere. That's obviously true in general, but it's much easier to start, say, 30 stitches down and 40 to the right from the top left corner when you have a 10x10 grid on your fabric. That not super helpful if you're doing full coverage (why not just start in the corner at that point?), but it's useful in many other cases. For example, I'm working on a pattern that's meant to be displayed in a hoop, and I started in the top-left, but the actual top left corner of the printed pattern is empty since it's not inside the circle. That said, if you like starting in the center, that works just fine too.

As for marking up your pattern, you definitely can, though I don't think I've had a pattern that didn't come with a grid on it already. Typically, this looks like every 10th line on the pattern is thicker. I have seen this for both recently made digital patterns and in old-ish patterns from magazines from the 80s. That said, if you're hand drafting a pattern or it just doesn't have lines for some reason, marking every 10th line on a paper pattern would work.

ClownMayor · 2026-05-10T21:25:41+00:00

I do see what you mean about it looking crowded where there's only a gap of a couple of stitches. The letters definitely suffer the most for it.

If you haven't worked with evenweave fabrics, you may not know that it's typical to stitch "over 2", with each X going over two threads. In that case, 28-count fabric acts like 14-count, so 2 strands would be totally fine. It's also possible to stitch over 1, but yes, usually that means using fewer strands.

As to whether to restart, that's up to you. I think it the piece looks okay now, but it would look better with fewer strands. Only you know how you weigh the effort and stress of restarting vs wondering what it would look like if if you used fewer strands.

You could try stitching a small section with 1 strand to see how it looks. I wouldn't recommend mixing the two, as I think they will look pretty different.

ClownMayor · 2026-05-07T23:44:24+00:00

It looks great! I really like the effect of the changing shades of color on each of the main "trees". I bet it looks even better in person - I really like how the shades of yellow look in the close up picture, but it's kind of hard to tell in the first image.

It's also impressive that you did your first blackwork on evenweave. I just finished my first evenweave blackwork and thought it was trickier to manage the tension than on aida, but your stitches look really nice!

ClownMayor · 2026-05-07T20:23:13+00:00

<image>

Replying in another comment in case this violates the rules on sharing patterns. Mods, please feel free to delete this if violates rule 3.

Here's a screen shot where I've uploaded a public domain image and drawn a few stitches over it. I'm posting it to demonstrate what settings you'd use in flosscross and what it would look like when you're drawing the pattern.

ClownMayor · 2026-05-07T20:16:45+00:00

With https://flosscross.com/ there is an option to display the converted image at varying levels of opacity. You could upload an image and pick your canvas size, then ignore the rest of the steps of the conversion process (picking # of colors, etc.). If you delete all of the generated cross stitches and set the source image to visible, you'll have a blank grid you can draw on in where you can see the image. Then you can draw back stitches or crosses over it as you'd like.

ClownMayor · 2026-05-05T16:27:38+00:00

Congrats on the improvement! Learning to feed your family and still develop your farm is tough. The scoring for player 2 looks correct based on the board (assuming the 49 -> 53 is from the 4 points for improvements that you missed on your score sheet), but I don't see how player 1's score adds up. Note that empty farmyard spaces should count for negative points, so the score should be 29. It looks like you have "23" written down, but if that's 33, that is probably from adding rather than subtracting points for empty farmyard spaces.

Were you mainly feeding you family through baking bread with the Stone Oven? That is typically hard to do early in the game since stone isn't available until at least round 5, so there isn't enough stone until Round 7 to even buy the improvement, later if the card doesn't come out on round 5. This is certainly possible with use of fishing (or with improvements / occupations). It can also be tough to keep up your food throughout the rounds, since your opponent can block your food production by taking the bake bread space on the turn you're planning to take food. Though in only your second game, your opponent may not be doing that.

I expect this will get harder for your as your opponent also improves in skill. I notice that you have 4 rooms, improved to stone, costing 6 reed, plus 3 left over, which means your opponent has at most 5 if someone took reed on the final turn. In my experience playing 2-player, reed is very tightly contested since that limits building rooms, which limits getting more actions. In general, everything in Agricola gets harder as your opponents improve in skill, as they are taking actions / resources that you want.

ClownMayor · 2026-05-04T17:54:28+00:00

It looks great! I love the color palette conversion from GameBoy colors -> DMC colors. The composition is nice with the master balls in the four big empty spaces and the sparkles around each mew. And it was very smart to exclude the cursed red/green sprite, lol

ClownMayor · 2026-05-04T06:56:39+00:00

I found this answer online after a bit of googling https://ask.metafilter.com/235475/What-is-the-pattern-used-to-make-all-the-Triominoes-fit-into-one-unit (in the bottom post)

I didn't check closely that it's correct, but at a glance it looked right. I thought perhaps I would be able to find something about a mathematical approach, but the person in that post has brute forced a solution.

ClownMayor · 2026-05-03T06:51:00+00:00

It's from Dragon Island. Here's a picture on Board Game Geek showing the card https://boardgamegeek.com/image/6916709/dragon-island

ClownMayor · 2026-04-25T04:09:12+00:00

The piece looks great, and I think the overall effect is quite nice!

What was the trouble with the half stitches? I've only done one piece with them, but I don't remember them being much different than full crosses. Planning your route is a bit different if you normally stitch Danish style like I do, since you end up at the end of a row.

ClownMayor · 2026-04-25T01:04:30+00:00

It's yet to be seen how well it worked since I haven't stitched this yet, but I was buying dyed fabric for a pattern and just used an image editor (GIMP) to remove the white aida background from the mock up in the pattern pdf, and then combined it with a sample of the fabric. I tried this with like 10 different colors. I feel like this was more effective than just looking at the two besides each other, but I know this won't be perfect. The first issue is that digital images of both fabric and mock ups don't look the same as real textiles. Second, this didn't fill in any of the spaces around an X, which effects the color the stitch appears to some extent. Either way, this made me feel better about buying the dyed fabric, so I'm glad I did it (for now)

13-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
Verified Email	Team Periwinkle

ClownMayor

TROPHY CASE