First, I need to say thank you to the amazing Rachel over at Ten Hour Stitcher! I won a HAED chart from her blogoversary giveaway! I can't wait to get started on it and tell you all about it once I wrap up the cabin project.
Since I was out of town, I haven't made much progress to post, so I thought I'd talk about gridding!
I hadn't even heard of gridding until sometime last year when I first started reading cross stitch blogs, and it immediately made a lot of sense to me, as I often find myself making tiny mistakes in my counting. I decided to try out gridding with a small project and found that it helped a lot - I did make a few mistakes still, but I caught them MUCH sooner when it was still possible to fix them :)
This was my first time gridding, which I did with normal sewing thread. I was so pleased with how it worked that I bought some Easy-Count Guideline for my next small project!
The one thing that I dislike about gridding is how long it takes - putting in all the gridlines for that second project took me three hours! And that's not even a particularly large project! I love how much it helps, but I can't even fathom how long it would take to grid a HAED chart. (Though I do gather that some people grid one page at a time, which could be more manageable.)
How do you guys like to grid? I know there are things like magic guide evenweave and pens you can use to mark up your fabric. What works for you?
- Leigh
I don't grid...never have. I have two HAEDs and I'm using 25 count magic guide aida for both. It's not a massive help as I'm stitching one over one so the magic squares are 20x20 but it does provide a reference point.
ReplyDeleteIf it helps you then it's probably time we'll spent as there would be less frogging!
Ha, I think you're right about the frogging! I'm thinking about maybe trying out some magic guide evenweave, but for some reason I have it in my head that I really want to stitch on 28 count, even though I haven't actually tried either. I should try to get smaller pieces of both so I can test them out!
DeleteI'm not a big fan of grdding and have only ever gridded two projects. I use a special water soluble pencil as I go rather than gridding loads at once. I used to use a "48" hour air drying pen but it disappeared after only 10 minutes so was useless!
ReplyDeleteTrial and error will eventually find you a gridding process suitable for you. :)