Stitching by colour or by area: how to choose an order and not miss stitches
When you open a new chart, you decide where to start. Most stitchers choose one of two approaches: colour by colour or area by area. Both work — what matters is knowing how they differ.
Colour by colour
You thread one colour and stitch all its crosses in an area or across the whole page. Then the next colour.
- Pros: fewer thread changes, a steady rhythm, handy for large solid areas.
- Cons: it's easy to miss a single cross among other symbols; the thread travels across the back between distant squares.
Area by area
You take a small square — say 10 × 10 — and stitch every colour in it, then move to the next one. Taken further, this becomes parking — see "What is parking in cross stitch?".
- Pros: each area is finished completely, you see results, fewer long travels on the back.
- Cons: lots of thread changes; you need several needles and a tidy workspace.
Which to choose
- Large areas of colour, few shades — by colour.
- Many shades and single crosses — by area; more in "Confetti in cross stitch".
- A mix. Often the easiest is to work one area at a time and, within it, colour by colour, starting with the one that has the most stitches.
How not to miss stitches
The main risk of working by colour is missed squares. What helps:
- marking the chart — stitch a cross, mark it; on paper, with a pencil or highlighter;
- checking each block — when you finish a colour in an area, compare with the chart again;
- highlighting one colour — on screen you see every square of that thread, while the rest fades into the background.
Where the app fits
In Crossette you can highlight one thread across the whole chart to see where its crosses are scattered. The app also shows how much is stitched and what's left for each thread, so you can see straight away how many squares of that colour are still ahead. Every mark is saved at once. For working a big chart on screen, see "How not to get lost in a big chart".
About the author
This article was written by the Crossette team. We're building Crossette, a cross stitch tracker for iPhone and iPad. It's in development; to join the beta, email [email protected].