easter Archive

Small needlepoint projects are always popular, but a bigger problem is figuring out what to do with them. If you stitch holiday-themed pieces you can, at least, put many of them out as decorations. But what do you do when the tree (or trees) are dripping with needlepoint, you have stockings for everyone, but you still love those small projects. The folks at the Florida shop, Needle Nicely, have been working on a marvelous idea; they have been stitching starfish to make a garland.They are not using painted canvases to do it but drawing the shape on canvas and then filling it with an interesting stitch. Even if you use another shape, you could easily adopt this idea as the basis of your own garland.Just find a shape and fill it. Recently they put up a post that is of tremendous help in planning this kind of project. It discusses

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Alleluia! It’s Easter. To enjoy this lovely holiday, here’s some more lovely needlepoint thanks to Carolyn Hedge Baird’s blog, Living with Needlepoint. Have a blessed day!

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Although my office is filled with real chocolate bunnies and eggs right now, waiting for Easter, I carve some Easter-themed needlepoint. Happily Carolyn Hedge Baird’s Living with Needlepoint blog is filling the bill with this delightful look at needlepoint stand-up rabbits. Aren’t they just too cute? If this isn’t enough furry cuteness for you, look for needlepoint rabbits on Pinterest, there are lots of great ones

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Easter is just around the corner (have you bought your candy yet?) but you still have time to make this delightful Easter gift. It’s a free Bargello needlepoint Easter Egg pattern that can be made quickly using scrap threads and a single background color. You could make several in a row and make a great seasonal picture using s ready-made frame. To get your pattern, just subscribe to our Bargello email list using the form below. Once you have confirmed your subscription, you’ll get the pattern. Bargello Needlepoint Mailing List * required Email Address: * First Name: Last Name: Country: Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua And Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas, The Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde

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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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Today is Easter and for Christians it is the happiest of days. The word “alleluia” is the proper word for the season. In the Catholic Church the word is thrown with abandon throughout Easter Masses. People also can exchange that wonderful traditional greeting “The Lord is risen! Alleluia!” to which the proper reply is “He is risen indeed! Alleluia!” So I thought we could take a break from church-going and eating and Easter candy and share some lovely needlepoint eye candy of crosses. My favorite company that makes painted canvas crosses is Designing Women. They make dozens of them, many based on historic crosses. Now they are available on both 13 and 18 mesh. The linked page is the start of two pages of crosses. They also publish some books of charted crosses that make great needlepoint. Leigh Designs has a series of seven stunning historic crosses painted on black

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I’ve written before about how easily the motifs in Quaker Samplers can be adapted to needlepoint. Thanks to Kell Smurthwaite of Kincavel Krosses we have this absolutely charming Quaker Easter Egg. The chart is on her blog (the thumbnail is pictured here) and is free for personal use. To get a great Quaker look, stitch it in Continental with a hand-dyed thread for the red. Use a natural or cream color for the background. And you still have time to stitch it for Easter

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Needledeeva makes tremendously charming canvases and I have created many stitch guides for sets (and backgrounds) for several of their series for Halloween, Easter, and Christmas. You can see the canvases pictured on their site. Here are the ones available (the canvas numbers are listed after the title): Halloween Halloween Parade (402-414) Halloween Blocks (461A-L) Witches’ Brew (417, 421, 423, 424, 426-428) Trick or Treat (460 and 460A-H) BItchy Witchy Sisters Basket (441C) Christmas Nativity (1350, 1350A-P) Gingerbread House & Gingerbread People (1352, 1352A-D) Snowmen in Snowflakes (1345A-F) Easter The Bunny Box with Easter Eggs (630, 630A-F) E. Rabbit’s Residence & Family (603, 603A-G) The stitch guides are available both in print (with cardstock covers and separate material lists in a zipper bag) and as PDFs. They are also available at wholesale for shops. Please contact me for details on the ones of interest to you

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On Sudukc’s delightful blog, she has been stitching on orange canvas, a series of carrots. They are being stitched from some of the delightful Cross-Eyed Cricket charts. As an aside, because these charts are whole stitch, they are fantastic to do as needlepoint. Anyhow, Sue has finished stitching the series and now has posted detailed instructions (with lots of photos) on how she finished them. Now you probably aren’t stitching 30 carrots and are wondering why this is such a great post. The method of finishing an ornament as a flat shape is a great, no-sew method for making ornaments. In addition because “carrot’ isn’t a shape you normally find, the post shows you how to cut and shape the board to get a great result. This is so good and so helpful!

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Next year, in addition to the chocolate eggs and Easter bunnies, why not add this charming needlepoint egg to your Easter basket? It’s a free pattern from Rainbow Gallery, designed by Barbara Baker. I love the crazy quilt theme. It’s perfect for using up your stash. You could make several in different colors to make a whole basket of eggs. The patter is downloadable as a PDF. Thanks and a tip of the Easter bonnet to Denise from Craft Gossip. Have a blessed Easter!

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Our guest poster today is Leigh Richardson, the always delightful artist behind Leigh Designs. I enjoyed her recent newsletter so much I asked her if I could share it with you. Leigh Designs was also exhibiting at the market. Her new designs for the show were five Fash-inserts for Lee bags. I’m completely in love with the wonderful dragon that looks like a Chinese New Year’s parade. You can see all five on her website. There will be more out this summer. Now on to Leigh’s comments: If Sundance is at a show, I’ll bet you’re there to see what is new. Now, they have sequins! Not your ordinary sequins, mind you … we’re talking Sundance, here! There are sequins with swirls, squares, glittery black ones and round circles within circles. There are flowers, stars and – would you believe – animal printed sequins? Can’t you just see them on

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Originally posted 2008-11-29 06:36:22. Republished by Blog Post Promoter When I saw this mini-egg on Ashley Bradley’s site, I just had to stitch it and share it as a stitch guide. I started and finished it yesterday. I am endlessly intrigued by the idea of stitch sampler, especially those which are not exactly traditional in shape. That’s what attracted me to this design, it’s a lovely opportunity to try different stitches (eight I think) within the context of something unique. It also brings out a couple of points about samplers I sometimes forget. Obviously in a sampler you are going to have many stitches, so they should be the dominant feature of the three aspects of needlepoint (stitches, color, thread). Of the other two, one should be in the middle and one should be tightly controlled. Otherwise chaos ensues (and you won’t like the result). In this case the secondary

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One of the things I loved best about my trip to England in 1998 was visiting churches and seeing all the lovely needlepoint kneelers. Kneelers is the term for the padded cushions or individual hassocks you use to protect your knees in church. If you don’t have kneelers and kneel on the floor, you get “chapel knees.” In England, and increasingly in the US churches do kneeler projects as a way to adorn the sanctuary. These projects involve the parish community and often interested stitchers outside the parish. Sometimes they are done for a special occasion sometimes not. The needlepoint might be only for the kneelers at the altar rail, just in the sanctuary, or for every kneeler in the church. They might have a theme, or they might only have something similar along the edges, I’ve seen all kinds. Recently St. Luke’s Epsicopal Church in Georgia completed their kneeler

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Judee of Needledeeva is one of my favorite designers and I was blown away by her new pieces which will be premiering at TNNA next week. I want so many of them I can hardly stand it. First off, there are the new Christmas stockings. If you like her small Christmas figures there are stocking to match many of them. If you’re looking for something elegant, look at the birds on black (my daughter’s favorite). And there are lots of others. Thoughfully for those with less time, they are done on 13 mesh. Then there is the new larger set of nativity figures. And more new Easter figures and houses. What a great collection to make and add to your existing ones. I’d love to make a village of the houses (now up to six) as the focus of my decorations. Also for Easter there are the new needlepoint baskets.

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