tips Archive

Originally posted 2009-11-23 07:01:57. Republished by Blog Post PromoterAbout a month before Christmas is not the best time to start thinking about making Christmas gifts. But, judging from my email, many of you are procrastinators, just like me. I went into my usual panic (even though I’m in remarkably good shape at the moment) and got thinking about what to look for to make needlepoint into gifts. In no particular order, here are some ideas: needlepoint bookends Get a set of inexpensive metal bookends and some 14 mesh plastic canvas. Stitch the canvas to be about 1″ bigger than the bookend on the sides and top. Make two of these. Cut two more pieces the same size, but don’t stitch them. Spray paint the bookends another color if desired. Stitch one stitched and one unstitched piece of canvas together and slip the bookend in. Photo Albums Look for albums with

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Today’s guest post, from Quail Run in Scottsdale, is full of wonderful tips for stitching with silk. I love these tips because they are designed to help avoid snagging the silk. ?Silk is beautiful and it’s one of the strongest threads to stitch with, however it can wear with abrasion. Here are 6 tips on avoiding those so called “fuzzes”. Anyone else have suggested tips? Anyone currently working with silk? Use a needle one size larger. This allows the silk to slide through the hole cleanly. Never lay silk on the canvas. Stroke with a laying tool. Avoid dragging silk across the canvas. Touch as little as possible, rough hands can cause abrasions. Separate strands before stitching. Use a laying tool so all the strands lie side by side. Thanks for letting me share these great tips!

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I’m working on a project and decided I’d try some new stitches fro Stitch INs & OUTs. Two in fact. The first one went very well, it was easy to stitch and if I hadn’t been diverted by watching Mad Men on OnDemand there would have been no mistakes. But then I started the other stitch. I studied the diagram carefully and started near the top of the area. I screwed up on the second unit and had to cut it out. The second time I started I managed to stitch two rows. They looked fine. The start of the third row looked fine too, but soon I ran into trouble. The accent stitches, done in a second color, were lined up incorrectly, so I knew the main units were placed wrong. I had suspected it because this unit isn’t supposed to end the same way for every row. I

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If you stitch Basketweave, you probably recite “Firemen go up stairs and down poles” to keep track of the direction of the rows. Doing this results in stitching that has the woven back that gives the stitch it’s name, below. Stitch two rows in the same direction next to each other and you get ridges in your needlepoint. But what happens when you stitch Skip Tent? All your stitches are on either stairs or poles but your rows go up and down. If only every other diagonal row is stitched, don’t worry about the direction of your rows. The open canvas means you don’t have two adjacent rows going the same direction. Some techniques, such as David’s Stucco Stitch start with Skip Tent but add a second color in the open rows. Stitch as you normally would, up one row and down the next and you’ll get diagonal ridges all

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As much as I love borders on needlepoint, I tend to choose those that do not require counting of any kind, such as using Upright Gobelin. Why? I’m never confident it will fit. Another way many people are counting challenged is knowing whether a stitch pattern or stitch will have three repeats. Knitters have this problem as well. But they have a clever (and free) tool to help them. We can use it too. Enter the stitch Pattern Calculator from Laylock Knitwear Design. Enter is the size of your stitch and the size of the area and it will figure our for you the number of repeats. To use it for borders, count the length of the border and use that number. To use it to see if a stitch fits, run it several times with length and width of area. For the stitch to fit there should be three

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Originally posted 2010-10-03 07:24:52. Republished by Blog Post PromoterBrenda and Cheryl are the delightful folks behind the newsletter and website, Needlepoint for Fun. In their most recent newsletter they shared some great tips for improving your tension when stitching. Brenda Stimpson wrote the article and has allowed me to post it here as a guest post. Creating an even stitch tension can be one of the most difficult things to achieve in needlepoint. I am stitching a piece right now and there is ONE STITCH – that’s right, ONE offending stitch – in the middle of my beautiful pillow canvas, that is off-tension. It’s all I can see when I look at my canvas. This one stitch that sits up a little bit from the rest might as well be waving a flag. Remember when you were a teenager and you looked in the mirror and all you saw was

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I’ll admit it, every time I stitch a background and it ends up matching, I’m both surprised and delighted. It’s not that they never match all the way around, usually they do. Often enough, they haven’t matched and those stick in my craw and make me anxious. You might have this problem too. I’ve come up with some tips for making needlepoint backgrounds easier and I want to share them with you. Begin by Looking Does your piece have lots of small areas? Is there lots of background? Canvases with lots of fiddly bits, such as the one pictured here, really benefit from stitching the background first. You will be able to see the holes to count more easily. When there is lots of background, stitch around the focal point enough to establish the stitch and enough to be sure it will match. You’ll have less background left at the

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Anita, a reader asked: “The first and only big needlepoint canvas that I did, I think I did wrong so I am tying to get good directions now to do this one right! I am going to start a 12×12″ canvas that is on stretcher bars now. Do I want to do all the small “detail” work first? Or can I stitch it row by row starting at the top? Which is easier or recommended? I think I have read that the “picture” needs to be done first! And then fill in the background? Why is this? Or am I imagining all of this and it doesn’t really matter??” ********** When you are Starting Needlepoint Stitching these kinds of questions are common, they aren’t helped by the sketchy instructions included in most kits. Although the kind of thread you’ve using can have a big effect on this, in general you

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Do you ever avoid using a stitch because you hate to compensate it? I do and Herringbone Stitch is one of the ones I avoid. In Joni Stevenson’s marvelous blog post on the topic, you’ll learn so much, with this post centering on the difficulties Herringbone can cause and how to solve them. I’m excited to try her suggestions

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Originally posted 2009-08-10 06:41:27. Republished by Blog Post Promoter“What’s your poison?” It’s an old-fashioned way to ask what you’re drinking. Last night, we took my youngest and her boyfriend out to dinner to celebrate her 21st birthday. To a restaurant that serves mixed drinks (relatively rare in Napa Valley). For each of us our “poison” is different. As stitchers, we have different “poisons” as well. One person might like Charted Canvas. Another might prefer line-drawn, a third might be addicted to printed canvas. Or you might like hand-painted canvas. In case you hadn’t noticed, I like it all and that brings me to the point. No matter what kind of needlepoint project or canvas you buy it should be of good quality. So ask yourself these questions: If there are instructions are they clear and complete enough that you can stitch the project? If there are letters or numbers on

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Originally posted 2011-03-01 07:36:34. Republished by Blog Post PromoterSusan Sturgeon Roberts, self-published, 2008, $9. This little comb-bound book is a collection of questions and answers about needlepoint. Without a Table of Contents it can be hard to find what you need to know, but there is plenty of useful information here, especially for the beginning stitcher. The questions are printed in bold with the answers after them. Often they have illustrations or photos accompanying them. Without organization, the questions and answers seem random, so you will have to browse to find the items of most interest to you. There is some organization, so several questions about canvas are grouped together, but they come between two questions about using older threads and three questions about painted canvases. And some additional questions about canvas occur later in the book. While I realize that Sturgeon is a fine stitcher, she speaks almost entirely

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Today’s guest post is from Theresa Swiecicki, owner of Homestead Needle Arts in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Yes, it’s that dirty word. How many of you have tossed that “F” word around in your mind? “I can’t start another project,” you whine to yourself. “I have to FINISH some!” I recently read an enlightening article on Knitting Daily where the author enjoined us to NOT feel guilty about having tons of projects going. When I change the word knitting to needlepoint, she essentially said just what I feel. Don’t feel guilty about starting a new project! Keep yourself going creatively with new ideas, new experiences, new threads and new stitches! You’ll be re-energized and continue to love your hobby. Don’t let it become a chore AND don’t feel guilty if you no longer love an older project. If it sits for a few years and no longer calls to you, consider

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Originally posted 2009-03-30 06:08:22. Republished by Blog Post PromoterI got this question over the weekend and I know it’s a problem many of you face: “How do I repair a hole in my unstitched needlepoint canvas?” There are two ways to fix the problem, depending on how large the hole is. If the hole is only one thread which has been cut, you ought to be able just to stitch over it. But this ONLY works if it’s one thread. Although I have done Tent Stitch in this case, it really works best if the stitch is longer AND is not beginning of ending on either side of the hole. If that’s the case, just stitch as you normally would. If it’s more than one hole find a piece of canvas the same mesh size, slightly bigger than the hole, about three to four threads all around. You could even

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Originally posted 2009-12-22 06:46:21. Republished by Blog Post PromoterOver the weekend I got asked about starting and ending threads on a piece where there are lots of different colors and coverage. This got me thinking about “show through” and how it applies to needlepoint. You almost certainly have been told to stitch light colors first. And I thought, for a long time, that this mainly applied to wools. That’s only partially true. It applies to wooly and furry threads because the tendrils of the thread got twisted up in each other. Light in dark will have little effect, dark in light will mess up the color. But it does apply to other threads as well for a different reason. Depending on the stitch, threads traveling behind the color may show more or less. The darker the color the less this will show. That’s one reason why teachers encourage you to

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Michrle is a beginning needlepointer. She wrote to me last week wanting to know how to find a needlepoint store. Because she lives “in the middle of nowhere,” finding one with an on-line presence is important. Here’s my advice for finding a shop you’ll love and work with forever. In terms of finding a store, the very best thing is to find one in your area, even if not really close, so you can establish an in-person relationship. I don’t go to my LNS (Local Needlework Shop) that often but I order from them all the time by phone, email, and on their site. Because we’ve met face-to-face there is a connection. If that isn’t possible, the next best choice is to find a physical shop that has a website you can use for ordering. Not all shops have sites where you can order and not all webshops have physical

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