After a little over a year of stitching now I still feel like a bit of a noob, but I’m pretty comfortable with the basics. These parts of patterns still give me some problems though!

My strategy is usually to just do all of one color then move on to the next filling in the gaps as I go, but when it gets down to filling individual stitches surrounded by a bunch of finished stitches it gets quite cramped and sometimes those final stitches end up looking pretty rough.

Is there some really obvious method of doing this that I’m missing? Does anyone else use a different approach?

  • @[email protected]
    8•6 months ago

    Ah, yes, confetti… Such beautiful color effects but such a pain in the ass.

    I don’t think there’s any magic trick to them but here’s what I find helps:

    • Keeping a good tension in my stitches - not too taut (distorts the grid), not too loose (risk catching).
    • Using a blunt needle - I know this is counterintuitive BUT I now have a much easier time stitching “in the holes”. With a pointed sewing needle, I often pushed it between the Aida threads, which then made single wonky stitches very obvious. If all stitches sit neatly in their holes it’s much better!
    • Accept that some imperfections will happen. This is a manual skill, it’s part of the fun. And anyway, it will look great from a couple feet away. No one will inspect your stitches as carefully as you do now - and if they do, you have permission to kick them out. ;)