I had never done a counted canvas project before (does the canvas sampler I did in elementary school count?) so when I saw that Debbie Rowley was doing a special class for the South Central Region of the EGA, I immediately signed up for it.
I’ve been curious about counted canvas for a while. Gary Parr from FiberTalk always talks about it, so what better chance to try it out.
The class came with the kit, all the materials and a very nice instruction booklet with very clear diagrams. Once the class started (once a week over four weeks online) we had access to a Groups.io site with all the handouts, and videos for each individual stitch.
Debbie is a great teacher, very organized.
Debbie uses very interesting threads:
- Finca Presencia cotton floss and pearl.
- Kreinik metallic threads.
- Rainbow gallery.
- Threadworx overdyed.
I’m glad she chose these threads from smaller, independent providers. The colors are beautiful and the texture is amazing.
The stitches were very interesting with names like amadeus, jessica, fish head, etc.
One thing about counted canvas that I did not like is that it’s not very forgiving. If you make a mistake you will find it in the next set of stitches because they will not fit right. After I finished the green fish heads in the center, I realized that I had miscounted previous purple amadeus in the center, so I had to pick everything and start again from scratch.
Must count and re-count!
The colorful swirls are called jessicas and they are very interesting. The last few stitches are tucked under the first ones, making the swirls very neat.
I used a laying tool to make the pink woven squares nice and smooth. The color grading is achieved by adding more threads of another color as they advance to the left and to the top.
It was a great class, I enjoyed it a lot!
Empty Thimble 