On my path to achieve the cleanest lines in tapestry crochet history, I dove deep and found some key elements that lend themselves to the cause.
Stitch Offset
Pixel art does not translate perfectly to crochet colorwork charts, and this becomes the most apparent when working on details where precision is important (e.g. linework, text). Stitches in tapestry crochet more closely resemble a brick wall than a grid. Instead of stacking in perfect columns, they are offset by about half a stitch. This offset can lead to stitches that look correct on a pixelized chart, but come off as a mistake once it’s crocheted.
Stitch Direction
Stitches lean in the direction you are crocheting. If you are crocheting left to right, that row will lean right. Because tapestry crochet alternates working on the right side and wrong side, rows alternate between leaning left and right. Keeping this in mind can help you develop a gut-check while stitching and give you an idea of where you are in the ‘brick wall’.
Example
To see what a difference these things make, I crocheted the shrugging emoticon and did a side by side comparison. The bottom one is ignoring what we’ve been talking about and has symmetry in the pixel design. The top one uses the stitch offsets!
The difference is the most notable in the diagonal that makes the arms. In the bottom left, you can see the stitches start to drift away from each other, creating gaps. This really highlights how the direction of your stitches contributes to the ‘brick wall’. Let’s look at the pixels for the arms specifically:
In pixel form it looks like it should be creating a clean line for both directions. The arrows indicate the direction the row is being stitched in. On the right side the stitches are leaning into each other, and so will connect and create the line effect. On the left side the stitches are leaning away from each other, and so will create the gaps you can see in the finished tapestry. To handle this, let’s modify the chart for the left arm to work with our stitch direction. While this looks a little wonkier on paper, it is how the lines were achieved for the cleaner emote in the finished object.
