Flora & Fauna Archive

Originally posted 2011-05-10 07:21:13. Republished by Blog Post Promoter This charming whole stitch African Animals Sampler of was Friday’s Freebie from DMC. The picture shows its stitched on 14 count Aida, but it would be wonderful stitched on needlepoint canvas. Stitch it in a single color in a hand-dyed thread for a great rustic look. Even better, pick out a lovely color of canvas (maybe one of the hand-dyed or Nature’s Palette painted ones) and then stitch it in a darker or brighter hand-dye in the same color. Don’t want to do a sampler? Consider repeating the animals as a wide border, or even stitching the animals singly as ornaments. Thanks to DMC for providing this to us!

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For lovers of Bargello Needlepoint there can be nothing finer than new projects. That there are four lovely ones is even better. The four have two groups of small projects (crackers and hearts) and two larger projects, including the one on the cover of the most recent Needlepointers. Even better there is a charming free design of a fish. You can find them all on her Bargello & Needlepoint 2 page

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“Garden of Delights” is the theme of the new crafts contest at Dover Books. Use Dover clip art, a Dover pattern,or be inspired by a Dover book & win $100 worth of Dover books. Winners appear in an upcoming catalog. The contest ends June 30,2013. The winning entry will be selected based on originality and technique by the Dover editors. Learn all about it here

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This month’s Learn-A-Stitch Owl features stitches from the book Stitch Ins & Outs for the body. Although the stitches are designed for buildings, as you can see you can use them for so much more. Tomorrow find my Plastic Canvas Blog Hop project. In this post I used: Pebbly Perle Baroque Silk The Thread Gatherer Silken Perle Belle Soie Lorikeet Watercolours Trace the outline of the owl onto your canvas. Remember that the owls and the tip of the top triangle are represented by dots and transfer them as well. From the middle dot, draw two diagonal lines to make the top triangle. Head Stitch the triangle in the top center of the head in Encroached Gobelin below. This stitch is columns of Continental with open canvas between them. Add the eyes using brads. Mine were bought at Michael’s awhile ago. These are about 3/4″ in diameter and came in

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Originally posted 2010-11-28 07:21:28. Republished by Blog Post Promoter Even though I’ve lived in California for more than 30 years, I miss the color of the Fall Leaves. I am happy about every little bit of color on our hills (California oaks don’t change colors) and I’m kept reasonably sane because grape vines change beautifully. At this time of year I’m missing the leaves and am wanting to stitch some. Originally I used stencils for my outlines, but it’s even easier to use printed outlines like these ones from Tricia-Rennea (found through a post by Denise on Craft Gossip). To use these for needlepoint. Enlarge the original drawing to the size you like. Print more or make copies if needed. Draw a shape on paper to be the size of your finished needlepoint and arrange the leaves inside it. When you like the arrangement tape the leaves down. Using a

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This ornament is based on Christmas quilts which have large trees made up of triangular patches of many different kinds of green fabric. A trunk of brown is added along with white and red borders. The green threads should be mostly solid or variegated with only slight changes in color. Tweeded threads add interest while not changing color. This ornament works up very quickly and makes an unusual decoration for the tree. To make the ornament you will need: 1 card Rainbow Gallery Backgrounds “Natural Silk” (BG1) 5 different green threads from your stash 1 shade brown yarn in a matte color 1 skein red variegated yarn 18 mesh canvas canvas 4″ x 6″ Begin about 1.5″ from the left side of the canvas. Following the ornament picture for color choice, make the bottom row of triangles. All the triangles are five stitches; the smallest size below. Once the bottom

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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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If you look at a leaf, you see that the veins on either side point to the central vein. If you embroider a leaf, you stitch lines, veins, pointing to the center vein. If you draw a leaf, you make lots of parallel lines on each side, pointing to that center vein. But what do yo do to make a new needlepoint leaf that looks acceptably realistic but conveys the idea of lines on both sides pointing towards the center? The answer is simple — reversals. Make the stitch as you normally would on one side of the leaf’s central vein. On the other side, flip[ the stitch so it slants in the opposite direction. This can be done with any diagonal stitch, from Tent Stitch on up. In this vintage Lee fan Tent and Offset Mosaic were used. It’s simple and it’s very effective

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This month’s Learn-A-Stitch Owl features Bargello. I’ve come across some really fun Bargello patterns and want to share them with you. In this post I used: Corn Flower painted 18-mesh canvas from Nature’s Palette Pebbly Perle P061 Gloriana cashmere/silk Light Apricot (no longer made) Treasure Chest TC18 Soft Sheen Fyre Werks FT5 Unidentified #5 pearl cotton overdye Trace the outline of the owl onto your canvas. Remember that the owls and the tip of the top triangle are represented by dots and transfer them as well. From the middle dot, draw two diagonal lines to make the top triangle. Head Stitch the triangle in the top center of the head in Open Continental Stripe, below. This stitch is columns of Continental with open canvas between them. Add the eyes using brads. Mine were bought at Michael’s awhile ago. These things change all the time so buy ones that are about

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A few months ago I bought this lovely HP Designs canvas of two cats. I bought it because the looks on their faces reminds me of my two cats, Darcy and Bingley. There’s only one problem — both my cats are black. You have probably encountered this problem in your stitching. The look of the canvas is right but the colors are wrong. You need to find a way of adapting the needlepoint canvas to you. In order to do this you will need a way to take notes and either acrylic paints and brushes or pens made for marking on fabric. This process can’t be done in a hurry and you will need at least 24 hours after you have made your changes to let the canvas dry before starting to stitch. Before getting down to the changes, look at your canvas. Are there areas that will not need

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Green hand-dyed canvas creates a lovely underpinning for this month’s owl. You could also use sage green canvas or the green vintage canvas. In this piece I used Watercolours in Potpourri Dinky Dyes silk in 69 Swan Valley overdyed #8 perle cotton, probably Needle Necessities Grandeur in G826 Olde Willow Stitchery Linen in 225L Rebekkah Green (no longer made) two four-hole gray buttons Trace the outline of the owl onto your canvas. Remember that the owls and the tip of the top triangle are represented by dots and transfer them as well. From the middle dot, draw two diagonal lines to make the top triangle. Make the eyes by attaching the buttons at the dots. Stitch the triangle in Tiny Knitting, below. This stitch really looks like knitting because the slant of the stitch changes in each column. Stitch the face in AA Variation, below. This is a Skip Tent

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Sparkly and in seasonal colors, this owl showcases a great technique, Blackwork on canvas, and two straight stitch variations. You’ll love it. In this piece I used: Nature’s Palette canvas in Rose Quartz Pebbly Perle in P19 Kreinik Tapestry (#12) in3237 and 031L Alyce Schroth Fine Silk in Rose Pink (no longer made) Dinky Dyes Stranded Silk in Mango Tango (17) HIgh Cotton in Cerise (804) Trace the outline of the owl onto your canvas. Remember that the owls and the tip of the top triangle are represented by dots and transfer them as well. From the middle dot, draw two diagonal lines to make the top triangle. Stitch the eyes in Jessica, following the instructions in January’s project. These Jessicas are oval, not round because I skipped one thread at the top and bottom of each stitch. Three strands of Pebbly Perle were used. Stitch the triangle in Darcy’s

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A cat in front of a cathedral window, that’s the them of this great free year-long needlepoint project from Blue Dogwood Designs. Each month, you get instructions for a new part of the design. This month the lesson covers how to set up your canvas and transfer the design. YOu can find it here. Transferring a design correctly is an important skill to learn, but if you would prefer to get stitching immediately, you can also order the line-drawn canvas on the Blue Dogwood site on the new page. Now’s a good time to get stitching!

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Free needlepoint projects, lots of new stitches, monthly programs, small projects! What more could you want. My 2013 series, Learn a Stitch Needlepoint Owl, starts this month with this adorable owl. Inspired by a patchwork cell phone case, you can make these owls in any colors you like. Every month four new stitches will be highlighted (one for each area except the eyes. The monthly project will appear on the fifteenth of every month through 2013. Complete instructions for the piece start below. Prepare your Canvas For this project you will need: 6 x 8 piece mono canvas in your choice of canvas light-colored solid thread for face dark-colored solid thread for eyes 3 solid or overdyed threads for body areas & triangle (optional) metallic to outline body areas For this owl I used: Kreinik #12 in4010HL Watercolours in 307 Calypso Conjoined Creations in 825M Burmilana in 3906 Hyla’s High

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Lois Kershner, self-published, 2012 ISBN978-1-4675-1069-1 Lois’s threadscape needlepoints are so wonderfully compelling: take a stunning landscape and use it as the basis of needlepoint. Others have created needlepoint postcards in the past, but Lois’s pieces not only depict the scene, they make it better. Visit her website and see some she offers as classes and you’ll immediately see what I mean. Better than taking a class to do one of these projects, though wonderful in itself, is learning how to do your own version of these lovely threadscapes. This new book is designed both to give you the tools and techniques you need to stitch a threadscape, and to give you the confidence to do one on your own. In this Lois succeeds admirably. The book is divided into three sections. The first chapter handles design considerations in creating a threadscape. I like that it applies many tried and true

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