This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of participating in a Question & Answer Zoom session as part of the EGA Virtual Lecture series. It was on “All Things Needle ‘n Thread” – and participants could ask whatever needlework or Needle ‘n Thread related questions they wanted to. It was heaps of fun! (You can still see if it if you want, through this link – there’s a nominal charge).

One of the questions that came in focused on needle painting. It was a very good question.

I thought that I’d elaborate on the topic, and show you what we talked about.

The participant is learning silk shading (also called “needle painting” and “soft shading,” among other terms). In her explorations, she’s run across multiple approaches: some splitting UP into previous stitches, some splitting DOWN into previous stitches, and some separating and coming up BETWEEN previous stitches.

Indeed, it is true – you can find various approaches to long & short stitch (which is, more or less, the stitch or technique used in needle painting), depending on the book, the instructor, the designer, the area of the world, and so forth.

As is always the case, when it comes to figuring out something, it helps to “look to the end” (what’s you’re desired end result?), to define terms, to explore variations, and so forth.

Let’s talk a little about this topic, then, using some tiny stitched samples that I played with for demonstration purposes. Later, I may expand the topic with some other samples, because these below were worked rather quickly and only with one type of thread – which definitely limits our results and understanding! If we play with the stitch with different threads, and we fiddle about with the various approaches, we’ll see divergent results that will help us learn more.