When the owner of a needlepoint store in America contacted me recently to ask if she may pass on my Left-handed Instructions to her customers, of course I said yes because I believe the pleasure of stitching should be available to everybody. Those instructions, came originally from Anything Left-Handed in London. That company had stopped using them, gave them to me and after adding a few remarks of my own, I have been offering them to left-handed customers ever since. But this request from America made me look at the instructions again.
For linear tent stitch, after the first row is stitched, the work is turned upside down (through 180 degrees, not back to front) and the return row is stitched. Basketweave tent stitch fares a little better with no turning, but in both cases you must start at the bottom left corner of the stitch area. These methods mean that the stitches lie in the same direction as if a right-handed person had done the stitching.
Why such a fuss?
Needles, wool, canvas – none of these have a right and left in the same way that say, scissors do. So I cannot see why there is a problem. Surely, left handed stitchers could just stitch the other way round - Go in the opposite direction. If I would start in the top right hand corner, they could start at the top left. An exact mirror image. The only difference would be that the stitches would lie in the opposite direction on the finished work. Would that matter? Who says which way they should lie?
So as an experiment, I have reproduced my normal stitch diagrams, and simply flipped the images. Would this work? I don't know because I am right handed; what do you think?
(Anything Left-Handed is now an online store. www.anythingleft-handed.co.uk)
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