The Scoop on Scooping Your Needlepoint Stitches

“Scooping” is a fun technique to add to your stitching in-hand repertoire. In a sewing like fashion, you would have the foresight of where it starts and where it ends kind of like making a turn when you’re driving. In order to “scoop,” you send your needle through the hole you would typically end a stitch and weave your needle so that it comes up the position where you would start your next stitch. 

This way of stitching is sometimes controversial and is not for everyone. Even though it’s super old school, the motions of the technique can cause discomfort to your fingers you choose to push on the back of the needle. I like to use leather thimble pads as a way to protect my fingertips from the wear from this technique.

However, it stitches very fast, especially in basketweave.

Below you will find some images of different scooping directions for continental.

For scooping basketweave, refer to the images below. When you’re scooping down “the poles” in the basketweave, you are going to insert your needle where you typically would to complete the stitch and weave it through so that it comes up the hole where you would start your next stitch. However, in basketweave, this means that you’re going to be coming up in a way that you send the needle directly vertically down the mesh and almost skip a little box like shown below.

When scooping “steps,” you will be sending the needle horizontally so that you skip a box, too.