Welcome! I’m back from TNNA in San Diego and mostly warm. Southern California was having an uncharacteristic cold snap (it was as cold there as here) and, like most folks, I wasn’t dressed for it. For which you could blame San Diego’s generally consistent climate. Anyhow, it was a fantastic show and in the one long article I’ll share with you what I saw and trends I see emerging. TNNA WINTER 2007 ROUND-UP TNNA gets bigger every year and there’s more and more to see. The show floor was so big, it was hard to see everything, and I stayed all three days. I saw great stuff and both designers and attendees were excited about the growing interest in needlepoint. PAINTED CANVAS Barbara Elmore (of Sundance) had what was probably my favorite designs of the show. She has two fanciful chandeliers. One of flowers and one of sea life. The
Monthly Archive:: January 2007
couldn’t tell you about it until now, but here is my newest stitch guide for Melissa Shirley Designs, premiering today at TNNA. They are a set of four luggage tags (just three pictured), made to go into the Lee’s Needle Arts leather tags. I love how they are so delicate. Hand-painted canvases which have very thin lines and delicate details can be a real problem to stitch as I’ve noted elsewhere in the blog (look at sketching a canvas). In this guide I have used a variety of techniques to give the tags detail including backstitching, straight stitches, whipped backstitch, needlepoint cross stitch, and overstitching. Watercolours is manipulated to make the outside ring of the turtle’s shell realistic. Shading and blended threads are used in several of the designs. My eldest was home for the holidays and she liked the turtle so much, I have to make one for her.