Custom needlepoint printing allows you to transfer a photo or some artwork you own to needlepoint canvas. Perhaps you would like to stitch a picture of your house, or some children’s artwork. By getting the design printed onto needlepoint canvas you can stitch it and keep it forever.
The custom needlepoint printer uses a high resolution digital image, or a good quality picture or photograph, so you need to be able to provide one of these things. The best services use a giclee-painting process to achieve an archival, museum-quality reproduction. The end result is not unlike a hand painted needlepoint canvas. Some custom needlepoint printers can even supply a color menu of the colors needed to stitch the design down the side of the canvas – much like a paint-by-numbers picture. This is helpful when you go to pull threads for stitching.
Before proceeding with custom needlepoint printing you should think about the following:
- Is your digital image large enough to be printed and stitched? You cannot take a 150 x 150 pixel image and enlarge it to 600 x 600 pixels without distorting the image so much it is not stitch-able.
- Do you own the image or artwork? Copyright laws apply with custom needlepoint printing!
- What size needlepoint canvas mesh would work best i.e. how detailed is the image and does it need to be on 18 mesh in order to bring out all the features when it is stitched?
- There should be a central object that the picture features. Avoid a picture that has a lot of background “noise”. If the image you are custom needlepoint printing is a digital one, you or the printer might be able to use editing software, if necessary, to make changes to the photograph and improve it for printing and stitching.
- Color images tend to work better than black and white ones, and they are much easier to stitch.
- Try to avoid pictures with a lot of dark colors as they do not print as well and they are harder to stitch.
A good custom needlepoint printer will be able to help you with these details and advise you as to whether your image or artwork is print-able and stitch-able. It is not cheap to get custom needlepoint printing done (usually $70-$150 depending upon the size of the reproduction) as the needlepoint canvas itself is costly, and the set-up for the artwork involves considerable labor. So, you want to make sure that what you are printing is going to become a stitched heirloom you will enjoy and keep for years to come.
