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| Rebecca Wood Canvas |
When I recommend using the tent stitch (aka basketweave in needlepoint land) on a small canvas I sometimes get a negative response. It's usually along the lines of "I asked for a stitch!"
Of course basketweave is a stitch. It's the first one I learned when I started doing needlepoint and I stuck with it for a long time, afraid to venture out into the vast, scary world of decorative stitches. Looking back at 27 years of needlepoint I find that I still love many of the pieces I did entirely in basketweave. On others I wish I had added some decorative stitches. This is a lifelong learning process.
In my opinion every needlepointer should learn to do basketweave correctly, both to improve the look and durability of our stitching and as a foundation for the hundreds of other stitches available to us.
I love the Rebecca Wood canvas shown in this post. I struggled for a long time trying to figure out how to use decorative stitches. No matter what I pictured in my head, the stitches I considered were either too busy for the design or overwhelmed important design elements like the bare trees, the deer or the moon's aura. This is a delicate, elegant canvas.
In the end I chose to do the entire canvas in basketweave, except for cross stitches on the deer eyes. I didn't even add beads, which I often do on Christmas canvases.
Sometimes tent stitch is the right stitch.
