Needlework Fabrics & Embellishments Many needlework kits lately feature charms, beads or buttons as embellishments. I'm not sure if these embellishments are a new trend or have been around for a long time and I'm just noticing them. There are bead kits where you can do entire designs in beads, but I will only guide you to needlework designs using the beads as embellishments. Most of these designs seem to be for intermediate or advanced stitchers. (Perhaps that's why I'm now noticing them, as my skill advances.) They also are designed for linen or evenweave fabrics. Most designs will recommend a fabric, but (unless you buy a kit) you're free to choose whatever works best for you. So first, a few notes about fabric.
Needlework Fabrics
Most everyone begins stitching on Aida fabric and is familiar with it. But the day may come when you are looking for more of a challenge. Aida comes in several sizes, such as 11, 14, and 18 count. These are the threads per inch. Evenweave fabrics and linens are much finer without the real defined "square" for stitching. Evenweave fabrics come in counts such as 22, 28, 30 and 32 threads per inch. Usually you stitch over 2 threads. So if you are using a 28 count fabric stitching over 2 threads, your design will be the same size as stitching over one thread of 14 count fabric. Stitching over 2 threads takes a little getting used to, but gets easier as you go along. See Kathy Dyer's Needlework FAQ Stitching on Linens and Other Evenweaves.
Evenweaves/Linen
Kathy Dyer's Needlework FAQ Selecting the Fabric - Aida vs. Evenweaves/Linen is a good place to start your research on selecting fabric. From this article, we find that:
"An evenweave is any fabric which has the same number of threads per inch in both the vertical and horizontal directions. The individual threads might not all be the same thickness--you can see this in linen--but the number of threads is the same."
With some linen fabrics, the threads may be uneven and there may be small bumps in the fabric. These may be a little trickier to stitch on. You can get evenweave fabrics of many types. Kathy also has a great list of available fabrics. To find the best fabric for you, I recommend visiting your local cross stitch shop to look at and feel several of them. I've found the cost of evenweave and linen fabrics to be almost twice that of Aida. You can purchase fabrics from online cross stitch shops, but it's better to know what you want first.
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