Needlepoint - Choosing a Canvas

Susan Battle: Hello! I am Susan Battle, owner of The Point of It All. This video is how to needlepoint and this segment focuses on selecting a canvas. Most canvases are hand painted by artist. So for example, these are shoes and you can see that the artist has painted Dorothy's shoes, red ruby slippers on the canvas. Now this is a purse. So the canvas is painted by an artist and you just start stitching and you can also paint your own canvas and canvas comes in a number of mesh sizes. I am going to demonstrate the three most common meshes and the way you determine that is using a ruler. You count how many vertical lines there are in a one inch segment. So for instance, here this has ten vertical lines in a one inch segment. So this is ten mesh because there are ten hole in an inch.

Now if we take our ruler over here. There are 13 vertical lines in an inch. So this is 13-mesh canvas. Likewise, you count again and there are 18 holes in an one inch segment. So this is 18-mesh. As I said these are -- these are three most basic sizes, but there are a number of other mesh sizes available.

Generally speaking you would use an 18-mesh canvas if you are doing a small intricate project, where you wanted a lot of detail. But if you are doing a geometric canvas and you really don't need that level of detail, a ten mesh would be absolutely fine, and 13 is kind of a middle range, a good basic, basic canvas. I am going to demonstrate on ten mesh because the holes are the biggest and it's easiest for us to see.

In the next segment I will be discussing selecting a needle as well as fiber.