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I'm glad I could help shed some light on a good use for backstitching! :D I know some patterns, especially old ones, can seem like the backstitching is completely unnecessary, but I do enjoy the designs that use backstitching to bring details to life!

I usually have at least a half hour each evening - some days can get up to a few hours potentially, but those days are few. I also like to bring a project with me while I wait for my kids after school or take them to appointments. And when I video chat with friends occasionally, I like to work on something then as well. It all adds up! I think I stitch somewhat quickly for the time I do get, because I know there are lots of people who stitch much more than I do. :)

I do full coverage and I hope it’s ok I answer as well… You might consider using thread to grid. Theres many RU-vid videos on it. Gemma stitches did a good video on it. I found using a pen hard to do as well. Depending on the mistake yes I will try to fudge. Either over stitch, or try to get back on track, or sometimes frogging is just unavoidable. For longer counts across consider having some pins or spare needles to place in holes to help keep the count and not confuse which hole is which and which one has been counted. Hope some or all of this is useful

@@arianaodom6601 thank you so much for your reply. It is very much appreciated. I will definitely look into all that you mentioned. I am addicted to full coverages so want to be more successful at them. Thank you so much.

@@simplynarelle you’re very welcome! Best of luck in your stitching journey!

Great suggestions, Ariana! I know some stitchers definitely prefer to use gridded fabric or grid it themselves, so it could be worth looking into some easy ways to accomplish that. I don't generally have too much trouble counting, which is why I can get carried away and stitch cross country the way I do. But I also will frequently check and recheck and triple check my counts as I'm moving around - checking to see if I'm lining up correctly to each new area I get close to. So, most of the time, I can fix a miscount before I've stitched very far. If I find an error in a color that is similar to the surrounding colors, and I haven't noticed the error until later, I'll just fudge it, but if it's a color that would matter, I will take it out and fix it.

I use various recycled tubes to store my projects - old wrapping paper tubes or the sleeves that fabric comes in from the craft store, mostly. Then, I organize them in a blueprint organizer, although I now have more projects than will fit in the organizer bin! :D

I know it's not for everyone, but I did choose to stitch the model for the second Herschel & Lucy design, Feeling Fancy, on Aida. It IS possible to do the fractionals and over 1 stitching on Aida, so I wanted to have an example of that. I understand, though, how it can be weird to pierce the cloth so many times. All that to say, a stitcher who started Introductions along with Carolyn last week decided to skip the over 1 ladybug and use a ladybug button instead - a great idea to avoid that section. Then, you can just stitch around the edges of the bird with full crosses that are closest to matching the backstitch lines.