tools Archive

With a big TNNA Market later this month, many companies are releasing new products that are perfect for needlepointers. Canvases & Charts Quail Run has delightful primative red chicken, pictured here, that comes with a stitch guide featuring great stitches and lots of texture. In addition they have a 12″ square magnolia pillow on 13 mesh. Machelle Somerville’s canvases, distributed by Fleur de Paris, are very popular. Her new design is a whimsical, colorful tree that has a mid-centiry modern color scheme. Also distributed by Fleur is Sandra Gilmore’s magnificent London window canvas. One of my favorite things about it is the needlepoint pillow covered sofa. I love JulieMar’s five canvas Geometric Letter Box. Available in 13 or 18 mesh, the group can be used together to create a box or used separately. They come with stitch guides. JulieMar also has a delightful series of puppies in bags that can

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Originally posted 2010-11-20 07:27:42. Republished by Blog Post PromoterThe Needle Bug, a great shop in Montgomery, Alabama, posted great instructions on how to use Thread Heaven on their blog earlier this week. If you’re like me and using this little product is baffling check it out. There is also a link on the page to buy it

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I got it unexpectedly as part of a gift bag at my first ANG Seminar, a lever staple puller. I love it. Even new these are cheap and they are, I suppose well-suited to their stated purpose of pulling staples. I wouldn’t know, I never use it for that. I use it to pull out the tacks I use to fasten canvas to stretcher bars. Tacks can be surprisingly hard to remove. Use this tool, putting the end under the tack head. Press down (it is a lever after all) and the tack loosens. Every time. Often boxes of brass tacks for needlework come with tiny plastic levers, but they are too short to have much force or to be easy to hold. Mine is about 4or 5 inches long with a nice hefty shaft. Being hollow plastic the shaft is light. The business end is metal and won’t wear

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Pearl Cotton is lovely for stitching but it can be troublesome to store. Work with it as packaged and get a tangled mess. Remove the tags, untwist, cut at the knot and you will have long lengths and lose important information. Try to put the tag back on and it’s a mess. Cut at the end with two loops and miss cutting some threads. This gives you a worse tangled mess. I usually solve this by cutting at the single loop end and leaving the tags in place. You will still have one knotted length that’s hard to pull out, but that’s a small price to pay. That is until now. Wild Olive has a cute and clever idea to make your own storage for Pearl Cotton using popsicle sticks, described in this illustrated tutorial. If you aren’t using a ring for storage, you can even do it more easily

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Originally posted 2008-12-21 06:22:25. Republished by Blog Post Promoter Is your husband like mine, unwilling to enter a needlepoint shop on his own? Today’s needlepoint gift is the perfect solution. He will get to shop in a store he’ll love and you will get some great project bags. The store is Cabela’s and the bag (pictured above) is the Wet Essentials Bag. It can be found in the camping section. Three sizes are available, large (10×8), extra-large (12×10) and XXL (15×12). The mesh on the outside makes them impervious to scissors and needles. The zipper will hold your stuff in the bag. They have a clamp in the side so you can attach them to things like your table or floor stand and the gusset bottom makes for easy expansion. I love my bags and the price (under $10 for the largest size) is great. I’m so glad me friend

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Snap Trays are all the rage these days for storage, ort containers, and bead containers but did you know that you can make your own? The advantage here is that you can use fabrics in your stash and create it so it just the look and size you want. I found some wonderful internet resources to do just this. My Little Mochi has a tutorial to make a round snap tray using a plate a a pattern. Noodlehead’s tutorial makes three sizes of rectangular trays. The book Fabric One-yard Wonders has a snap travel tray as part of a set called “Jet Set.” A New Zealand company, Zippy Designs, has patterns for several in different sizes with different kinds of hand-quilting on them. Their pattern includes a template for the perfect placement of snaps. Craftsy has a free snap tray pattern as well. In the comments there was a good

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Are you confused by the colors in Kreinik’s metallics? Do you wish you could look at similar colors side-by-side? While shop owners, teachers and designers have color cards, most of us just get frustrated. Kreinik has come to our rescue with the new Color Selector Tool. It’s one of the best and most useful tools for stitchers on the internet. The site goes well beyond a color card. With it you can find all the shades in all the sizes of a particular color. If you want to know if a particular color comes in specific size of thread, enter the number, you’ll know immediately. The table includes product (size), number, name, shading order, and a photo of the thread. You can sort by any column, and more Those columns pack so much into them. You can buy threads from the table. You can see easily how the different finishes

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Michele asked for my recommendation for canvas for her as a beginner. The answer is simple 14-mesh mono canvas from Zweigart. Let’s look at why. The Weave Mono canvas is woven with a simple over-1-under-1 weave. Made from single threads of heavy long-staple cotton, it’s smooth so that your thread will go through it easily. The single-thread construction means that the weave is easy-to-see and the intersections float. This will make it easier to learn Basketweave and will allow your canvas to be blocked back into shape when you’re finished stitching. Mono also has the largest holes of any weave of needlepoint canvas. This means that as you are learning you’ll have a bigger target. The Maker I’m sure there are other makers of needlepoint canvas, but Zweigart is the canvas if choice. Their deluxe line has orange threads woven in the selvedge. Their canvas is beautifully woven. It is

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Raymond Crawford will have many new designs out but one will be a lovely tribute to New York City. You’ll see iconic signs and symbols of New York including the Brooklyn Bridge and a sign for the Apollo Theater all done up in an apple outline.. It’s a clever & different canvas. His other new canvases include more new eggs, a clever gnome, and a great snowman. One of the big hits of TNNA markets is called Sample It! Held on Friday nights, shops can purchase limited amounts of special items and packages, many put together exclusively for this event. It’s also the only place at this market where you can take actual product home, so these items will be showing up in your shops right away. Accoutrement Designs, the makers of those great magnets & fobs has some special collections available at this event. These collections include some new

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Keeping needlework taut on scroll frames is a never-ending problem for stitchers of all kinds. Another problem is attaching the canvas or fabric to the bars. FA Edmunds has addressed both these problems with their Ratchet Scroll Frames. They come in complete sets, with rods in three sizes: 12″, 18″, and 24″. Other rods cannot be used with these sides. They can be used for fabrics, evenweave fabrics, or needlepoint canvas. The entire frame is made from lightweight plastic. When assembled it still has a bit of give. Although it might seem that this would make it too flimsy for needlepoint, I found that it held up well in my tests. The give in the frame seems to allow the canvas to flex, much as it would on stretcher bars while still keeping the canvas tight enough to stitch. The product comes in a plastic bag with instructions. The two

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Coming in a variety of colors, the Handy Caddy is a practical and inexpensive answer to storing all your needlepoint tools and accessories. It’s made of clear plastic and is on a metal frame that folds flat. It’s 8″ high, 11″ wide, and 5″ deep so that it stores lots and you can reach everything. Lightweight the Handy Caddy won’t weigh you down as fabric bags or metal tins will. There are six small pockets on the outside with a large central bin. I found the smaller pockets perfect for things such as laying tools, pens, and my longer scissors. But they didn’t open enough to fit things such as my little tins of needles. They are best to use for long thin tools. The center pocket is quite roomy, the whole length and depth of the Handy Caddy. There is plenty of room to store your tools and even

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Can you use Q-Snaps for needlepoint? I know that they are popular for crosstitchers and quilters. I have also recommended them for people with problems gripping stretcher bars. Until Sunday, I hadn’t tried them myself. The big concern is that with Q-Snaps you need to have something big enough to put over the full rounds and cover with the partial rounds that snap into place. Once you do that the fabric stays tightly in place. That’s great for cross stitch and free embroidery but not so good for needlepoint where the margins aren’t so generous. My friend William Swords stitches on pre-finished canvases. He recommends Q-snaps for his pieces if you stitch in a frame. He put one together for me. His method of attaching the canvas is fantastic. It will work with any canvas that has a bound or finished edge, preferably sew under or sewn with seam binding.

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Tacking needlework onto stretcher bars is a fact of our stitching lives. Until recently my hands were strong enough to do the job. Now I need a tacking tool for needlework. It has come in the form of the EZ Tack-it Tool. Designed to be used in any application where tacks are used, it magnifies your strength to make it easier to insert and remove tacks. There are three components in the package, a box of brass tacks, a tack inserter and a tack remover. I tested all three. Tack Inserter For me, this was the biggest reason to buy the tool. I used it on both new and old stretcher bars and with several different kinds of tacks. It works like a champ. The rounded plastic head makes it easy to hold and comfortable to use. The head is large and heavy enough to press the tacks down with

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The K’s Creations metal stand, available in both floor and table models, is a wonderfully versitile stand. The swivel head allows you to move your canvas in so many directions. BeStitched has a customer’s video review of the stand on their site. The great thing about this review is that you can easily see how the swivel ball head works. Speaking from my own experience, it’s a great stand. I’ve had my model since it first came out. I’ve upgraded it to the swivel ball head and recently bought the adaptoer to use it as a table stand too. YOur choice of a floor stand is dependent on so many things (read my article about them here), but you could do much worse than this lovely stand

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Originally posted 2008-11-08 06:09:38. Republished by Blog Post PromoterA friend of mine is learning needlepoint and asked me a couple of days ago about ripping out. I explained to her that I use scissors with sharp points, a needle and tweezers, I cut a but from the back, pull the thread out with the tweezers or the needle. But what if that isn’t enough? As luck would have it, I stitched red on white canvas where it should have been white (I know, but I’m designing the piece). So this process, while it did a good job, left me with red fuzzies which needed to some out. I tried using my needle, but it couldn’t catch many of the threads. That’s when I turned to Judy’s Boo-Book Stick. It has two ends, one which looks like a mascara spoolie brush and one which looks like an overgrown dental brush. The

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