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The Frog Stitch is what Lazy Wenches say they are doing when they are removing errors. We call it that because of the noise that is made as we rippit! rippit! We hate having to frog, but it is something that must be done well. I've found several things that help.
First off, I keep as close a track of my pattern as I can. I use several tricks that I found in books so I don't get lost in my pattern. I also practice on a doodle cloth so I am not having 'learning experiences' on my real project. But the best laid plans of Wenches and men 'aft gang agley' and I have had to frog enough to learn how to do it well.
If I just have one or two stitches to remove, I unthread my needle, and working from the front, use the eye of the needle to lift and unstitch. I then rethread the needle and keep on stitching. I find that if I keep the shank of the needle perpendicular to the direction of the strands I want to lift up, I have less trouble.
If there are more than one or two stitches, I will cut my working thread and set it aside. I get out a fine pointed pair of scissors and working sometimes from the front and sometimes from the back, I cut the incorrect stitches in many places. The important thing about cutting out errors is Never close the scissors unless you can see the tips of them and know how much you are cutting. Then I use tweezers to remove the cut fluff. The goal is to cut the working fiber into small easily removed bits, leaving the ground intact. I'll cut both on the front and the back for a bit, tweeze for a bit, cut some more, tweeze some more... I'm not in a hurry.
Sometimes after creating all that cut fluff, there is a lot of it in the ground that doesn't want to remove with tweezers. Try using a soft, clean toothbrush or a boo-boo stick to get that fluff out. Don't be too vigorous in your brushing, you don't want to make the ground fuzzy. If you are not a rabid conservationist, attack your piece with tape and tap the sticky side of the tape on the fuzz. Clothing lint brushes, damp sponges, and for extreme cases a mid-project washing might be tried. Your call.
Many times as a Wench frogs, she finds that she has buried ends in the area that she is trying to remove, but she doesn't want to remove the stitches that are connected to that end. This is where careful cutting from the back and the front helps. This Wench will either stitch over those ends when she replaces the stitching, or will bury them using a tool like a Do Lolly or a Star De-tailer in an area nearby. If you haven't got one of those nifty gadgets use a loop of thread to pull the very short thread end under other stitching.
If I have very huge sections to remove early in a project, I might simply start over. Yup, I trash a partly done piece and begin fresh. My rule of thumb is 10 to 20% of the work on a medium sized or small project. On a large project, it is 2 to 5%. I rarely regret it. This Wench stitches for fun, not aggravation.
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