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| Halloween Night Collage - Eye Candy by Ruth Schmuff |
I like checkerboard and geometric borders and sometimes I like to add them to a painted canvas.
When adding this type of border you have to decide how big to make it. While this is a matter of taste to some extent, you have to make sure the border is big enough for the canvas and small enough not to overpower it.
I add a border by first counting the threads on the sides of the canvas. Sometimes you get lucky and the stitch you want to use will come out evenly. If it doesn't you have to decide how and where to compensate. You can compensate around the corners - for example, if the stitch is over 5 but you have 4 stitches left after you count the side, you could put a 2x5 stitch next to each corner on that side. Or you can work from the ends to the middle and compensate in the center of the border. While it is tedious to count canvas threads, it will save a lot of ripping if you get to a corner and find that it doesn't come out evenly.
Halloween Night Collage was started during a Robin King embellishment class at Pocket Full of Stitches in Lubbock, Texas. I asked Robin about adding a black and white border and she thought I should try it. I counted the canvas sides to get the 5x5 Scotch stitches to come out without compensation. There are black stitches in the top right and left corners and white ones in the bottom corners so it's not entirely symmetrical. I think it looks great and so did Robin.
This canvas looks fantastic without a border too - I've seen it stitched that way at Fancy Stitches in Cleburne, Texas. You can see the original canvas here:
Halloween Night Collage - http://www.tistheseason.org/b3368/
