Question: Where do you start your stitching?
When starting a new project, where do you commence stitching?In the middle of your piece offabric.
Top left hand corner of your piece of fabric.
Top right hand corner of your piece of fabric..
Hope this question hasn't been asked before... It's interesting.. I stitch in hand, no hoops or frames and I always start at the top right hand corner and slowly work my way down to the lower left hand corner. This way I never touch the finished stitches.. Hope this makes sense.. Thanks for responding to my question.. It depends on the design for me also.I also use a frame where the finished side is rolled to the inside of the frame so it is not exposed to getting soiled.I use dowl rods to get the different widths for my patterns.I initially bought a frame in order to get the side pieces but now I can replace the rods with the dowl rods and make a frame up to 36 inches wide in order to sew without getting creases or raised areas in my patterns from having to change the rod positioning.I simply roll it head to toe and never have to move it from side to side
I start somewhere in the center with the most prominent dark color and work outwards this is most important when the picture has a border or when it is large as you want even tension. I have found working this way my finished work is always straight. All cross stitch patterns are designed to be worked this way as it is the easiest method to find the center of the fabric and the center of the pattern. Back in the day I always started top left.Then I had a couple of mishaps (one 16 count instead of 18 count, and another a compete miscalculation of fabric size for some reason).Now I nearly always start in the middle.At the moment I'm half way through a huge HAED so I started at the top left.Fingers crossed I got the fabric size right. As close to the middle of the chart as I can! I like the it is easy to find the middle of my fabric and knowing that correlates to the middle of the pattern. When starting my first HADE, measuring to find the top left corner of my fabric was a nightmare for my brain! Hmm... I haven't done many projects, and I've started them all differently. The last one I started in the middle - it was a large project for me, my soluble pen had dried out, but I really-really-really wanted to stitch, so it was easy to start in the middle. :D For full coverage I usually start in a corner and work horizontally. For more simple patterns I start in the middle and work my way out, starting with the color closest to the meeting points of the arrows that show where the middle is It's an interesting thread! I prefer to start in the middle to make sure I'm not out of canvas somewhere:) But starting in the top left corner (to keep the finished stiches as clean as possible) is a great option too. I always tend to start at the top right, then I go with the different parts of the picture. But, if its inside a sqare or some other kind of form, I start with the picture onli, and left the form for the end :) For me it depends on the design, really. I like to start with the colors closest to the fabric color so if I have to make a float with contrasting thread it doesn't show through that easily. in the middle I start in the middle and do the left hand side first (I'm left handed) always in the middle I start with a dark colour and don't care about the position. Mostly in the center.But lately, while doing ornaments, I've been starting on the bottom left.I've been able to get more projects out of the fabric doing it this way. I start at the bottom right if the picture is a large one but for the cirque I have started at the top left for thefirst time in life... I always grid, washable pen for any design under 12 inches and magic gridline (red plastic re-usable thread ) for larger designs and start either top left (larger designs ) or bottom right (smaller designs ) :) I prefer to start in the middle. Then I stitch up and later the bottom half.
