Originally posted 2008-08-16 06:38:32. Republished by Blog Post Promoter I’ve been working hard on my Stitch your Stash around the World Sampler, which has been posted on Create Needlepoint, Barbara Bergston’s wonderful blog. The picture above has Blocks 1 & 2 complete, Block 3 mostly complete and a start on Block 4. I’m having great fun working on it. Block 4 is one of my favorite stitches, Byzantine. Block 5 is another favorite, Milanese. I like both these stitches so much in my second Chinese Letters book (for Raymond Crawford’s great canvases), I have four variations of each of them. I can’t wait to get back to stitching, maybe tomorrow night (We’re going to a wedding today)
Monthly Archive:: May 2011
With the big needlepoint market in just a couple of weeks, there will be lots of new needlepoint items coming out. Here are just some of them (with more in Thursday’s post). One of my favorite stitcher’s magnets had a thin ribbon connecting the two halves. Parking Lots (distributed by Bryson) do just that with stickers covering each half and a ribbon rose for decoration. I’m so glad someone is doing this. Custom House has added two stitch books to their thread line (Gumnuts) and their delightful charted needlepoint. Quick Stitch Help and More Quick Stitch Help are small but have over 50 stitches and variations in each, all diagrammed and explained by Julie Sackett. Anne Cram Designs has a glorious painted side table called Hampton Roses. The top is 17″ square and can hold a 14″square canvas. The sides and legs are beautifully painted. The Elizabeth Turner Collection has
Originally posted 2009-05-22 08:32:38. Republished by Blog Post Promoter I have always been afraid to use silk gauze. First there’s the eye thing — I don’t do well with magnifiers. Second there’s the mesh size thing, I tend not to like things which are that delicate and small. But Kreinik has taken silk gauze out of this world and into the world of basic needlepoint with silk gauze in 18 and 20 mesh. It comes mounted or unmounted. Since retail is 3 or 4 times the cost of canvas, I like the mounted best. You can order on-line through Kreinik’s excellent on-line mall or your LNS can order it for you. During my vacation I had a chance to make the piece pictured above on 18 mesh silk gauze and it was tons of fun. I can’t wait to make more. Silk gauze is often not sold by the inch,
Liz Morrow has instructions for making this delightful storage device for your many magnets. The Magnet Minder could be made to any reasonable length and you could even attach more than one to the same ring. You can make it in any color you wish and embellish it, as Liz has with vintage (or new) buttons. I got to make me one of these!
. My friend Susan does an amazing job of finishing and has recently started a blog. She showed, in an illustrated tutorial, her method for finishing an open ornament. Her model uses a hat, pictured here, but this is exactly the technique you would use for mini-socks, bells, full-size stockings, mittens, or any object you want to be open and lined, but not stiff like a purse or box. Thanks, Susan!
Originally posted 2008-08-07 09:10:09. Republished by Blog Post PromoterBACKGROUNDS CD, Volume 1, Ruth Schmuff and Janice McGuire, self-published, 2008. I loved Ruth’s two disks of stitches. I like them so much I even made a spreadsheet of all the stitches so I could find them easily. So imagine my delight when I found out a couple of weeks ago there is a new CD, just on backgrounds. Now you might be thinking that there are plenty of backgrounds in the first two CDs and you’d be right. But this CD present 481 repeat patterns that are classified by the size of the repeat. What I love about these is that they take advantage of one of my favorite background techniques, needlepoint damask. In this technique threads of contrasting texture, value, or color are stitched in a regular pattern to make the background. Starting from one stitch repeats and going up
You can get a new free needlepoint stitch guide from me at the Kreinik Thread Blog. This beer glass coaster is stitched in a variety of Kreinik threads, including one of the Candy Glass colors and new Easter grass (beer and glass respectively). It also features a whole lot of Kreinik embellishments, adapted to needlepoint, including red tape shapes, iron-on ribbon, micro-beads, and hot fix crystals. It’s a ton of fun to stitch
Originally posted 2006-05-18 08:48:26. Republished by Blog Post PromoterAlthough with the price of gas, your vacation may be no further away than the closest theme park or beach, or even swimming hole, I thought I’d take a little bit to talk about stitching when traveling and when on vacation. I’ve divided it up into sections, so you can read the relevant parts. Remember that vacations are for relaxing so find needlepoint which is relaxing too. Something with no deadlines, no hard techniques or threads. One of my favorite things to do in the car is basketweave as the trip gives me plenty of chances to look around and take breaks. Even so you can get lots of needlepoint done on a car trip. Stitching on Airplanes Although the restrictions have eased on sewing scissors, you might want to look into thread cutters or blunt-ended scissors to take in your carryon.
Originally posted 2006-02-18 08:31:54. Republished by Blog Post PromoterAnn Caswell, Suzanne Howren & Beth Robertson, ISBN: 0-9720237-1-2. 2005. I will admit, I’m a serious thread addict. Surveys say women buy lipstick more than any other beauty product when they need a lift. Well not me, I buy thread — new threads, new colors, or even yet another skein of a color I love. So the first edition of The Thread Thesaurus had a place on my bookshelf right away. But the revised edition is EVEN BETTER. If you don’t own this book, go out and buy it. Right now. If you own the first edition, go out and buy the new one. Right now. It’s that good. What the authors have done is analyzed, classified and described threads, something never done before, making a reference book. Over 400 new threads and a ribbon section have been added to the book.
Criss-cross Hungarian is one of my favorite stitches, but it has some flaws. Between the stitches there are open intersections. Yes, you can leave them bare, yes, you can cover the with cross stitches, yes, you can add beads. But sometimes none of these is quite right. So I developed a stitch I call Inside-out Criss-cross Hungarian. It has units of three stitches that cross each other, creating the non-directional texture of the stitch. But the units are long-short-long instead of the short-long-short of Criss-cross Hungarian. It’s diagrammed above. Something magical happens when you do this. Instead of open intersections, you have open holes. And, if the thread is thick enough, as is the case with the knitting yarn I used here, it covers completely. Here it even covered the white of the bare canvas at the edge. It’s a good stitch to know
Originally posted 2010-05-12 06:59:24. Republished by Blog Post PromoterNeedlecrafter’s Travel Companion, Chalet Publishing, Colorado Springs, CO, 2010, ISBN 978-0-9708118-6-9. $11.95 Some people buy postcards or snowglobes as souvenirs of their travels, not the stitchers and knitters I know — they buy canvases, yarn, thread, and projects. I’m so bad I will buy travel pieces YEARS after I’ve been someplace, just so I have a needlepoint ornament. The first step in doing this is finding a local shop. Not only are you more likely to find something local there, you also have the fun of seeing a new shop. Always a problem has been finding the shops. The Yellow Pages used to be my main resource but I never felt as if I found what I needed. Needlecrafter’s Travel Companion is the book I’ve needed all along. Covering the US and Canada this book lists shops for knitting, cross stitch and
I must admit that in looking at the Table of Contents of this book, I was skeptical. The most useful stitch dictionaries I have used classify stitches by stitch family. Sharon takes a different approach and one that makes lots of sense. She divides her stitches into groups: stitches for small areas, stitches with no strong direction, and stitches with diagonal direction. Reflecting on it, I realized that this is how most stitchers (including me) think about and pick stitches. While sometimes I say “I want a cross stitch here.” Mostly I say “This area is so tiny, what can I put in such a small space.” So a book organized this way is just fantastic. It’s also an incredibly practical approach for beginners. Sharon has picked a nicely edited selection of stitches (this is the first in a series of books) that would give a beginner enough variety to