candy Archive

Do you live in San Francisco’s East or North Bay, Solano County, or Sacramento? Have you been wanting to learn needlepoint but couldn’t find a warm, inviting place to learn without all the stuffiness of the “needlepoint police?” Sandy Grossman-Morris and I have teamed up to create this exclusive needlepoint class for beginners, starting March 2, 2013. The design is the adorable ice cream cone seen here, created exclusively for the class. The class kit is included in the fee and has everything you need to stitch the canvas: computer-printed canvas all threads stretcher bars tacks needle Even if you have never tried needlepoint before you’ll learn everything you need to know, including 2 kinds of Tent Stitches and five decorative stitches. You’ll have a chance to use four kinds of threads and you’ll get samples of many more. The class is three lessons, one month apart. They will be

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Originally posted 2010-07-06 06:28:53. Republished by Blog Post PromoterThere’s no doubt about it, stitchers love stitch guides. Our appetite for them is almost insatiable. Talk to any designer and they will tell you shopowners ask about stitch guides all the time. If a designer has none, they wonder why not. If a designer has some, they want more. And we, as stitchers want them and want them at an affordable price. Today marks the opening of my new on-line shop, Needlepoint Stitch Guides. Here you will find stitch guides for many popular designers, available both as PDFs (for you to print) or as printed guides). You can order directly from the shop and have your guides as soon as the same day. Talk about immediate stitchy gratification. It’s the largest on-line shop dedicated to needlepoint stitch guides and related products. There’s lots more to the site. You’ll find reference information

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Originally posted 2009-12-06 07:37:11. Republished by Blog Post PromoterEarlier this week I spent a happy morning poking around Cheryl Fall’s Needlepoint site at About.com. One of the things I love about the site is that, as a professional designer, Cheryl has a wealth of patterns she is sharing with us, for free. Before we explore some of the great patterns there, she has a page describing how to use the patterns. This is particularly helpful because it includes instructions on how to print and enlarge the patterns. Her patterns are designed for beginning and internediate stitchers. The index page for them is organized by category. Scrap Bag projects are among my favorites and French Braid is a delightful quilt-inspired piece that could be done as a row or two for napkin rings or expanded to make a pillow top. There are also larger projects, such as Asian Maple (a favorite).

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Originally posted 2006-07-10 06:59:54. Republished by Blog Post Promoter Here’s a sneak peek at the next stitch guide. It will be for six of Melissa Shirley’s candies (four are pictured above). Called A Box of Chocolates, I’m writing it with my friend Holly McGuinness of Golden Touch Crafts (http://www.goldentouchcrafts.com). The guide will be available at shops and directly from Golden Touch. These candies are completely addictive to stitch and I’m sure we won’t be able to resist doing more. I expect the guide will be available in late August, but check Melissa’s site (http://www.melissashirleydesigns.com) under stitch guides for availability. Now back to work!

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I am always so happy at TNNA to go to Kathy Schenkel’s and Melissa Shirley’s booths. They are always full to bursting with great new ideas and canvases I just drool over. I love Kathy’s bone-shaped ornaments for dogs and this year she has a delightful new set. These are “Things Dogs Do,” all done in a clever, easy-to-stitch style. She also has mini-socks and ornament rounds for a number of different colleges and universities that aren’t just the usual logo style, often they have iconic buildings or other symbols of the campus. She also has new dog and people tote bags and new North Woods designs. There are two new Christmas series, a nativity and a stars of Christmas, people associated with Christmas in stars. A very clever idea is her animal alphabet, available both as a panel and as individual letters. The animals are creatively posed in and

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Originally posted 2008-01-29 07:05:16. Republished by Blog Post PromoterI’m not generally a one to have fits and fits about wanting tons of canvases. So much needlepoint has passed through my hands (I’ve been stitching since 1970 after all), that I almost never go nuts wanting more and more needlepoint. But last week I visited the long page Melissa Shirley Designs has of their new canvases which debuted at TNNA earlier this month. There was so much great stuff I hardly know where to begin. You can see the whole page here, but I’ll have links to individual canvases throughout the article. And I really want to share it with you. They are simple but I really loved the two sets of a dozen needlepoint “lollipops,” two for Halloween (here and here) and two for Christmas (here and here. If you’re a beginning stitcher, try a few of the geometrical designs,

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