You know how to stitch, you aren’t teaching beginners, why would you ever use Continental if you knew Basketweave? There are occasions when you must use Continental and good reasons why you can sometimes. You may have thought, or even been taught several times, that Continental only has oblique stitches in every other row. This is not correct. That stitch is a combination stitch of Continental and Half-cross Stitch. Do not use it. Read my post from yesterday about how to stitch Continental, or watch Susan’s video to learn how to make the stitch. Once you learn, your needlepoint will be released for all kinds of new effects. First, Continental uses about a third less thread than Basketweave. Most kits have enough thread in them for Continental, not Basketweave, So you don’t have much of a choice here. Or you might be short on thread or can’t find the dyelot.
Monthly Archive:: October 2008
A couple of days ago a reader, Janet Moyer from LA, wrote to ask me about linen threads for needlepoint. Finding linen thread is somewhat problematic. I just happened to be doing some research on this just last week. Here’s a rundown of what I found. Rainbow Linen (from Rainbow Gallery): two-ply Swedish Linen, solid colors. I really like this thread and use it for lots of things. It has the best color range of any linen, including some nice bright solids. Natural Flax & Natural Linen (also from Rainbow Gallery). These are undyed linen threads, very loosely twisted. They are part of the Backgrounds line. They are fragile. Use very short lengths for stitching. Flax n’Colors (from The Thread Gatherer) also a two-ply linen, Hand-dyed. I like the colors of this thread. Many are the same as the silks & silk wool blends, but I think they are softer
A couple of things have come together in my mind. If they don’t entirely make sense blame it on my awful cold. On Sunday I was at a local knitting shop with a friend. This shop sells a small bit of needlepoint as well. We were talking about business and she said that she hoped knitting would pick up again after the “scarf craze.” Yesterday Cheryl posted a comment about the new site saying, “Kudos to you for bringing awareness of needlepoint back again. I am so concerned that it is going to become a lost art as young people have little time nowdays and tend to go to the hobbies that give instant results.” This got me thinking about what we want hobbies to be. We live busy lives, so we want a hobby which fits into our lives. It should be simple portable easy to do in little
This month’s Twinchy Challenge is a little different. There isn’t a them but a thread. Watercolours from the Caron Collection. Since it first came out, I’ve loved this thread and managed to accumulate a whole bin of it. And I bought three more skeins last week, two just because they were pretty. You’re probably like me in that you have lots of Watercolours. So here’s how this challenge works. Put all your Watercolours into a pile, close your eyes and pick one at random — that’s the basic for your challenge piece. From that Watercolours, find other threads to coordinate with it, and stitch a Twinchy. Yours can be geometric (like the one above), words, letters, or a picture. It can be whatever you like. I want to say a couple of things about the canvas I’ve used for this Twinchy, since it’s unusual. It is a 16 count linen