Mayday: White Is Not Always White
My best friend recently started needlepointing. She sent me this photo with a one-word message: Mayday.
A proper mayday call gives your position and the nature of the emergency. The photo covered both. Her position was partway down the background. The nature of the emergency was the whites.
The top of the background is one white. Lower down, it is a different one. Same canvas, same painted area, two whites.
Nothing unusual happened here. A mismatched background is how plenty of stitchers first hear the words dye lot. That lesson usually travels with thread chicken, the thread tag and the seam ripper. If you are new to needlepoint, here are all four.
Why white is not always white
There is a scene in The Devil Wears Prada where the new assistant laughs because two belts look exactly the same to her. Miranda Priestly then explains, at length, that the assistant's blue sweater is cerulean.
White thread works the same way. Pepper Pot Silk has a Salt, a Coconut, a Cream and a Mascarpone. Two whites can look identical in the skein and under shop lights, then turn into two colors once they are stitched side by side in daylight.
And that is before dye lots.
What a dye lot is in needlepoint thread
Thread is dyed in batches. A dye lot is one batch, and the brands that track them print a lot number on the tag. The next batch of the same color number can come out slightly different, because dye, water and temperature vary a little every time.
In a small motif you might never see it. In a background, where one color runs edge to edge, a new lot shows up as a line.
Not every brand prints one. With no lot number on the tag, the only protection is buying enough the first time. Hand-dyed thread varies the most, and a new lot is close to a new color.
For anything with a lot number, buy all of a color at once, from one lot, and buy more than you think you need for a background. How Much Thread Do I Need for Needlepoint? and the thread coverage chart do the math.
What thread chicken is
A real mayday call also reports fuel remaining. In needlepoint, gambling on that number has a name.
Thread chicken is the game of trying to finish an area before the thread runs out. Everyone plays it. With a few inches left on the needle and four stitches to go, it is harmless. With one skein left and a third of a background to go, losing means buying one more skein from whatever lot the shop has now.
Losing is survivable if you still have the tag.
Why the thread tag stays in the bag
The tag is the label that comes on the skein. It looks like packaging, which is how it ends up in the trash. It names the brand, the thread line, the color name and number, and the dye lot. The lot number is usually written nowhere else.
When you run short, a shop can check for your exact lot, but only if you can give them the line, the color and the lot number. "The white one" does not narrow it down. The longer version of that hunt is in the WIP purgatory post.
So the tag stays in the project bag, with the thread, until the canvas is finished. Take a photo of it the day you open the skein.
What to do when the thread already does not match
If the two are close, they can be blended by alternating them every few stitches, so the change never forms a line. If they are obviously different in the middle of an open background, the newer section comes out and gets restitched in thread that matches. If no match can be found, a solid background may need one lot from start to finish.
The last two mean ripping out stitches.
How to use a seam ripper on needlepoint
A seam ripper is a small sewing tool, named for its job in sewing, which is opening seams. It has a long sharp point, a short point with a ball on the end, and a curved blade in the crook between them. On a canvas it cuts one stitch at a time.
- For one or two wrong stitches, skip the blade. Unthread your needle and use its tip to lift the stitches out in reverse, one at a time.
- For anything bigger, set up first. Good light, magnification, and enough patience to go slowly. There is a 5x magnifier on The All In Travel Chain.
- Start on the back of the canvas.
- Slide the long point under a single stitch, keeping the tool flat against the canvas, and lift until the thread meets the blade. Look before every cut. The blade is sharp enough to cut the canvas too.
- Cut a few stitches, then carefully pull them out with clean fingers. Turn the canvas over and pick out whatever is still holding on the front. Yanking distorts the canvas.
- Dab a piece of tape over the front and the back to pick up the fuzz.
- Restitch with fresh thread. What came out is worn.
A nicked canvas thread can be repaired, but it is a real repair, so slow is the whole technique. Seam rippers go dull, so replace yours now and then.
If you would rather watch it done, Patricia Sone has a video on how to use a seam ripper.
Why ripping out is called frogging
Stitchers call all of this frogging. Say rip it, rip it out loud and you will hear the frog. That is the explanation stitchers give. Nobody has proven it, and the name has stuck anyway.
Mayday received. Next skein, the tag stays in the bag.
If you made it this far, I have thread drops coming soon that will keep your tag and thread together always, no matter how you cut the skein.