vintage french arthmetic illustration

It’s written in French, but the important thing is the wonderful images. I found things, like this chart from an arithmetic book, that could go straight to needlepoint. There were more pictures from textbooks, illustrated magazines, children’s books and games, and advertisements. There are even tons of vintage alphabets to adapt.

illustration of a vintage french phonics card

Related posts:

1. Easy Adaptation to Needlepoint
2. Rescuing Old Needlepoint
3. Curved Daisies – Vintage Needlepoint Motif
4. Trimming the Tree – Planning the Embellishments
5. Fern – Free Vintage Needlepoint Chart

This book is a good overview of needlepoint, with simple, clear explanations of basic stitches and techniques. While not all of her information is correct, there is lots of good stuff in this book. Some of the techniques, like shading, beadwork, and waste canvas are more advanced. Each technique has clear pictures illustrating it and a project to follow.

In general the 18 projects are traditional in design, calling on traditional and folks art for their inspiration. All of the projects have complete materials lists and working instructions. All are charted. This is my biggest problem with the book. The charts are in black and white with symbols and can be very hard to read. if possible, enlarge them before stitching.

For the more adventurous stitcher there is information about dying your own yarn and canvas as well as a chapter on design. The design chapter covers design, color, borders and the technical aspects of getting your design onto canvas.

Related posts:

1. The New Anchor Book of Blackwork — Book Review
2. Ultimate Big Book of Finishing, Needlework Knowledge and Techniques – book review
3. Backgrounds: The Finishing Touch – book review
4. Shay Pendray’s Inventive Needlework – book review
5. Miniature Embroidered Patchwork – book review

I got this question recently from a reader.

This is the right way to transfer a design to canvas:

No you do not use tracing paper, the material in it will rub off and discolor your threads.

Here’s what you do:

1. Trace the outlines of your design on the paper with black marker so it is easy to see through the canvas.
2. Place the canvas on top of the design. If it’s hard to see, tape the design, then the canvas to a window or light box.
3. Using a permanent marker made for making on fabric (I like Pigma Microns from Sakura myself & they are widely available). trace the lines of the canvas.
4. Let sit overnight to dry completely before stitching.

YOu can see the steps used to do this in this illustrated tutorial.

I did lots of testing of potential canvas markers and wrote this post about them. I have used other markers and any marker can have the formula for the ink change and no longer be suitable for needlepoint. It’s good to test from time to time.

A final note: Never use anything to mark on canvas that isn’t waterproof, made for fabric, or tested. Always let dry overnight because many things become waterproof only after they dry completely.

Related posts:

1. Transferring a Design to Needlepoint Canvas
2. The Graph Paper Problem
3. Creating a Simple Design
4. Adapting Randomly Cut Paper to Needlepoint
5. How to Repair a Hole in Canvas

Illustration: Gustaf Fjaestad (artist), Miss Fjaestad (weaver). Below the Falls tapestry design, c1913. From The Textile Blog.

A blog post last week at The Textile Blog got me thinking about this again.

All art is a conversation. In it there are always two people: the artist and the person seeing the art. The artist has an idea and expresses it in a particular way. It may not be an idea you like and it may be expressed in a way you find ugly. But he began the conversation with his idea and its expression.

The second person in the conversation is the person viewing the art. By seeing the expression of the idea, you, even if it’s just mentally, react to it and comment back.

I never thought much about my part in the conversation since looking at art is almost as much of my life as breathing until I was in my 20′s and invited to a docent-led preview of an important modern art exhibit. I went through it and hated every piece, but I understood them. Without knowing it I took part in the conversation.

But in needlework there is always a third party — that’s you the stitcher. As The Textile Blog points out, often they are unknown. But always, always, we take part in the conversation. We do it through our choices of thread, through our stitches, and through our ideas on what the piece is about.

It may be not obvious at all, as is the case in the tapestries in the blog post. Or it may be very obvious, as is the case in how I personalized the baseball player pictured here. But as the maker we take the artist’s idea, add our own, and express that combination in the finished piece.

So go out, embrace your creativity and stand up to be part of the creative conversation.

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Barbara Bergsten is a delightful needlepoint designer. Her canvases are fresh, bright, and really fun to stitch.

But don’t you always wonder how a hand painted needlepoint canvas design is created? Not the mechanical process of applying paint to canvas, but how a design is developed. I know I do.

Wonder no more! Barbara has created a lovely blog post about the process.

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1. Printed vs. Painted
2. Why are Hand-Painted Canvases So Expensive?
3. What Do those Canvas Painters Do?
4. Designing your own Needlepoint
5. Some Random Thoughts on Designing

sample of handwriting

Begin by enlarging the handwriting or font to the size you want. If you are working with a person’s actual handwriting, you might look for a font which is similar. Enlarging the letters will make it easier to determine if the font or handwriting will actually work. Make your test the actual text you want to use.

Now do a little test by laying over the needlepoint canvas you want to use onto the letters. Look at it and evaluate it as needlepoint. Ask yourself some questions: is each letter you need distinct and different from the other letters? Are the thin strokes too thin to be rendered as stitches? Are there areas that will look like blobs when they are stitched?

If the answer to all of these questions is no, then you can skip immediately to putting the letters on canvas.

If the answer to any of these questions was yes, you need to do some evaluation before continuing. If the letters aren’t distinct or blobby, can you make them larger? Do this and try again? Did that solve the problem? If it did then move forward. If it did not, continue the evaluation.

Do the thin strokes disappear? Think about whether you can make them wider without making thick and thin strokes the same width. If you can’t, you should look for another font or method. A combination of Whipped Backstitch, Whipped Double Backstitch and Whipped Chain Stitch might solve this problem.

Are some of the lines dotted? You can solve this problem by manipulating stitch direction as we discussed last week, but it is good, but not necessary, to know this in advance.

If, in spite of all of this, the font still doesn’t work, you might look around for another font.

Putting the Letters on Canvas

You have letters you like, you know how they will work on canvas and you know the size they need to be. Now you are ready to transfer the design to canvas. For this you will need a permanent, waterproof or dye-based marker with a very fine point. I like to use Pigma Microns in brown because they are very fine and the brown will show through thread a little less.

Put your printed lettering under the canvas. Align the canvas so that the base of a line of letters is along one thread of canvas. If it is, tape both to the table. If it is not, you will need to be moving the canvas so that the base line will be straight. You will need to check this after each letter and adjust the canvas. That is important for goo-looking needlepoint.

If a letter is distinct and not blobby, trace it onto canvas as it is. Trace the outline of the letter first, then color in the interior.

If a letter is blobby, look to thin out the blobs by removing some stitches. Make the loop more open, collapse a crossing of lines into a thinner area. You can do this by not tracing the outlines of the blobs and then coloring intersection by intersection.

If letters aren’t distinct, think about both the handwriting and the purpose of the needlepoint. Many people’s handwriting doesn’t have distinguishable letters. If your purpose is to render the handwriting, I wouldn’t worry about this, If the purpose is to make something readable to people who don’t know the hand, then look to making alight changes in shape to make letters distinct.

While this is not the easiest process in the world, go slowly and the end result will be a unique piece of needlepoint you designed yourself.

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1. Two Ways to Turn Diagonal Stitches
2. Alphagraphics by Jini Smith — Cool Vintage Book
3. Say it with Needlepoint
4. Adding Initials to your Needlepoint
5. Easy Adaptation to Needlepoint

Using the photo conversion features of many charting programs tends to make designs which look too fuzzy to me and which require way too many colorchanges.

So I’ve avoided this. But I’m so excited by my results so far that I want to share them with you. This method works best when there are clear objects in the picture and where your own knowledge and stitches will create much of the detail. It is not well-suited where you want to reproduce the picture exactly, nor will it work well for faces and such. But it’s perfect for buildings, landscapes and still lifes.

Begin with choosing your picture. Make sure it is one with lots of contrast. For example if you want a needlepoint of a building at night, use a picture of the same building during the day for your conversion.

Make an enlarged color copy of the photo to the size you want the finished building to be(not the overall size). In my case I wanted the building to fill up most of a 5″ x 7″ area, so that’s what I looked for.

Use tracing paper and trace over the main parts of your picture you want to transfer to needlepoint. Usually this is the building outline and perhaps the horizon line. Remember to add things like roof lines, windows and doors if you are doing a building. Don’t worry about color changes at this point and if you are confused look at your original photo.

Use pencil to trace and go over it with black pen once you are happy with the result.

Now photocopy this picture to get a more sturdy piece of paper. Go over all the lines again with a black pen to make them sharp and clear.

Use this to trace the picture onto your canvas.

In my case I have a winery and the hills in the background (both from the photo. In the foreground will be some grass and the vineyard full of flowering mustard (which is in bloom right now).

The drawn building and hills has given me structure where I need something to follow and the open foreground will let me be creative.

No the result won’t look like the picture, but it will be better than I could have done on my own.

Complete instructions for making this design and a line-drawn canvas are available from Napa Needlepoint.

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1. Turning Quilt Patterns into Needlepoint
2. Pixel Stitching – Magazine Alert
3. Twinchy — Monthly Needlepoint Challenge
4. Turning the Berlinwork into a Cushion – Ribbon Frame (part 4 of 4)
5. Copyright and Stitching a Building

You saw the first one at the top of this post.

Judy’s version is pictured on the left, mine is on the right.

I call it my Brazilian parrot Bargello because the vivid green reminds me of parrot feathers.

I like the combination of the two because we need to learn to be more adventurous in our use of color. It’s hard, I know, but making small things like ornaments is a perfect way to go. They don’t take long to stitch, they don’t have to go with anything, and, you only need to see them a few weeks each year.

So how do you pick a color scheme when you have a charted geometric piroject. Begin by looking at the threads called for in the project. You should, as much as possible, substitute using the same threads.

Then pick a color theme. In my case it was a skein of Tentakulum (from YLI) Painter’s Palette silk in Chagall. It is a vivid green with bits of rose, blue and violet. Those colors would be my accents. I used those colors to pick the threads for the rest of the design.

I had some blue-violet Flair so I used that. The white Flair in the center is the same as the original project. I originally picked a lighter pink, but I decided as I stitched, that I wanted something richer and more varied. So the rose at the center is a Weeks Perle. I didn’t stitch the middle and outer rounds of white initially. But I changed the outer line of Tent Stitch to a very pale pink. It looks almost white, but it is a bit softer. The outside green border is Lorikeet from Gloriana in a green which also reminds me pf parrot feathers.

Having picked these threads (all from my stash) and stitched with them, I was struck by how nice the greens looked against the white canvas. That was something I didn’t expect, I had been too lazy to go pick another ribbon thread.

At that point I decided to go with white for the open rings so that the greens would be accented as they were with the open canvas. Since the original has beads, and I didn’t have any, I used floss and T Stitch for the middle round. The outer round was more problematical. The original uses Flair and I had used most of my white Flair. I rooted through my stash and found this charming white/opal color of YLI’s Ribbon Floss Shimmer Blend. Because of the bit of metallic in it, it has some of the same texture as Flair, so it worked. But if it didn’t, I had planned to rip it out to try something else.

There are two things which hold us back from trying out different colors. One is that we don’t feel we can make good choices. This is easily solved by taking your color cues from overdyed threads. They are dramatic and beautiful and inspiring.

The second is that we feel we must pick everything out before we begin to stitch. DON’T. Pick what you feel sure of, then add or change as you go along. If I had picked all the colors at the beginning, this piece would have had a neon pink center, which would have been too much of a contrast with the green, a dark green border, which wouldn’t have reinforced the green of the overdye, and who knows what for the white Flair.

By letting the stitching show me what was needed, after the initial selection and by being willing to change my mind and adapt, I got a lovely result.

Don’t be afraid, try color!

Related posts:

1. Changing Colors on a Canvas
2. Changing Colors on Painted Canvas
3. Updating Colors on a Vintage Canvas
4. Mitered Florentine Ornament Freebie
5. Translating Bargello Needlepoint Patterns

Yesterday we used a tool to generate this seamless Japanese pattern. Next week we’ll convert it into a chart for needlework, done a couple of ways.

But today I thought I’d tell you a little about this pattern which is a pretty common one in Japanese art. The pattern is called Hemp and is based on the leaves of the Hemp plant. It’s name in Japanese is Asanoha.

Hemp is a very useful plant and its fiber can be used to make rope, thread, paper or cloth. You can even find hemp yarns for knitting of needlework.

While the pattern is popular and can be found on everything from kimono to chopstick holders, it is traditionally associated with the growth of children and was often used for swaddling clothes. It is also oftenm found on summer kimono, which can be woven of light-weight hemp fabric.

The pattern can be individual blossoms toughing only at the points or a more overall pattern.

One place where you will see this pattern is in a Japanese form of quilting, called Sashiko. Sashiko is stitched in white or off-white threads on indigo cloth. It derives from sturdy quilted garments made for farmers and still retains a somewhat rustic look.

Related posts:

1. Japanese-inspired Blackwork
2. What is a Diaper Pattern?
3. Generate Japanese Patterns to Inspire Your Needlepoint
4. Free Pattern from Fabric Design
5. Kokeshi — An Idea for a Needlepoint

Today I’m starting a short series (look for the next installment next Wednesday) to help you use Japanese patterns to create exciting backgrounds for your needlepoint.

The first step is to create a pattern. The second step is what patterns work nicely in needlepoint. The final step (in two weeks) is to convert the pattern to needlepoint and stitch it.

One thing about needlepoint patterns that makes many of the cute designs you see around NOT work, is that the pattern needs to be seamless. In other words you shouldn’t be able to see the individual tiles of the pattern and seams where they connect. Think of a fabric. When it’s just an uncut length, the pattern is seamless. But one you sew it into a garment, the pattern may not match at the seams — that’s what you don’t want.

Creating seamless patterns can be hard for you (it is for me) but it’s easy for the computer. And here’s where this handy tool — Japanizer — comes in. Pick a pattern from the 27 choices. Then pick a size from extra small to extra large. Finally pick a color choice.

Click on Japanize.

The pattern, in the colors you chose shows up as a background. YOu can link to it, download it or tweet it.

The pattern I created is pictured here.

Thanks to my DD who pointed this out to me.

Related posts:

1. Japanese-inspired Blackwork
2. Diaper Patterns – book review
3. Knitting Patterns as Sources for Needlepoint
4. Inspiring and Instructive Diaper Patterns
5. Free Embroidery Patterns