Home Decor

In a lovely post earlier this week on Asmara there were 14 stunning rooms that featured needlepoint rugs. This is just one of them.

Now making a huge needlepoint rug may not be in the cards for you (although you might rethink it after seeing these rugs). But we still can learn many lessons that we can use in creating needlepoint.

Here are some ideas:

Let’s say you wanted to make a pillow for your living room couch. To make it easy, let’s make it Bargello so it can be any colors you want. While these rooms create their color palettes from the rug, you can also work in reverse. Take your cue from the colors in the room and use those to make a great palette.

Notice how in some rooms the main color of the rug is an accent color in the room. That’s a great idea for needlepoint backgrounds. Make them coordinate with a room by using one of the room’s accent colors as your background.

When thinking about patterns, designs or elements for your needlepoint, look to aspects in the room that you can echo. For example my house has very squared off stucco frames around the windows. They end in little squares that are wider than the frames. When we bought new lights and new door hardware we looked for designs with squares to reflect this. Does your wallpaper have stripes? Do you have a diamond-paned window? Use those as elements in the needlepoint you do for that room.

Your needlepoint does not have to include just the colors of the room. The room pictured here is a great example, there are more colors in the rug than in the room. You could imagine this rug in a room that was mostly green or red instead of this sunny yellow.

Think about your needlepoint design in terms of scale in a room. You want a mix of patterns in different scales. If your room is full of small busy prints, think about a bolder needlepoint. This kind of contrast creates excitement and gives the eyes a chance to notice the difference and be refreshed.

Even if you only stitch pillows or even smaller items, we can be inspired and learn from these large-scale projects.

Related posts:

1. Decorate with Needlepoint in Unexpected Ways
2. The Pine Needle — My First LNS
3. Color & Light

Read more:
How to Decorate with a Needlepoint Rug