Lucy Iducovich carpet (stitched by me)

Beautiful!

Incredible.

Stunning! I abhor working on gauze. I'm not very good at pulling my stitches evenly, so my gauze work quickly becomes crooked. Your work is amazing.

Thanks! I don't know what it is about silk gauze, I just can't get the tension right and I'm always sticking my needle in the wrong hole. Even for tiny stuff I prefer to work with my fabric in my hands, not on a frame, and that just doesn't work well with the gauze. Plus it's more or less impossible to pull stitches out if you make a mistake...

I love all of this. I foolishly tried to weave a rug for my dolls house and it did not go well. Then I thought about cross stitch, but I can't find the backer fabric small enough to not look bulky. What size should I be looking for?

When you say "backer fabric" do you mean the fabric you'll stitch on, or fabric to cover the back of the finished rug?

I usually stitch on 36 or 40 count evenweave, over one (here's what that means if you're not familiar), with one strand of DMC floss. I like to do full cross stitches (X), and it is a little bulky. If you do a half cross stitch (/) it will be less bulky.

Or you can stitch on silk gauze -- this is a lighter fabric so the finished piece is thinner, but the silk gauze is trickier to stitch on. I think it comes in 40, 48, and 60 count. You can use a magnifier if it's too small to see comfortably.

If you're talking about backing the finished piece, I often don't bother with that, but sometimes I use iron-on fusible interfacing, it's very thin.