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Personal, or birthday, plaids are a unique way to make a needlework accessory for yourself or as a gift. As part of Counted Wishes, beginning Feb. 1 I will be teaching a Cyberclass on making these plaids as a wallet insert.

The class can be done in needlepoint or cross stitch (the cross stitch insert is pictured above). In the three-lesson class you will learn how to create your plaid and arrange colors for it, how to design the plaid, stitching the plaid, and how to finish it easily to fit into a wallet.

This delightful class is only $20. and will include a free ebook copy of my popular project pack, Birthday Plaid Mini-sock (value $10).

You can register for the class via PayPal.

All registrants will be added to a private Yahoo group for the class.

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Blog Problems Update

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

I have now completed searching the blog for problems, and none have been found. According to the support people I’ve talked to, it is most likely a problem with IE or Windows. The last tech I talked to said he sees only about 40% compliance with IE being able to view sites properly.

I am going to be restoring the site from last week’s back-up and reposting the article since then.

I’m hoping that will fix the problem.

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Jane’s Border Advice

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

Earlier this week my friend Jane Wood (of Chilly Hollow) had some outstanding advice when encountering a signature or other painting when your want to add a border to a needlepoint canvas.

This happens, I’m afraid, fairly often and puts many stitchers off adding borders. The problem occurs because designers cut the canvas to have about 2″ around the design. In that 2″ you have the designer’s signature, maybe the company name, sometimes the design name and an identifying number. All good and useful, but taking up space.

Since so many designs don’t have the backgrounds painted, this adds problems when you want to add a border, or even a large background.

Take Jane’s advice, I’m going to look for an already stitched canvas I loved but didn’t add a background, because of this problem.

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Needlepoint Resolutions for Napa Needlepoint

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

There are many projects I have been thinking about and need to get going. I’d like to get each of these in progress by the end of 2010. Some are further along than others, some might not happen. I would love your opinion on some of them.

1. Publish my beginning needlepoint book as a printed and electronic book. Printed is a no brainer, I just need to do it. I have been thinking about Kindle and such alot. Do you use it? Would charts and stitch diagrams work on it?

2. Offer the first techniques on-line class. These classes are designed to teach you a specific family of techniques. Sometimes with a project, sometimes not. The first one is on shading and should be out in the spring. What other classes would you want?

3. Publish the new Bargello book. ‘Nuff said for now.

4. Getting the two new stitch samplers stitched and published and getting in eBook form the projects started. I have two really cool ones planned, but not stitched. One is more formal and is on small stitches. The other will give you a chance to try designing your own within a context and covers more kinds of stitches. Soon I hope to be looking for some pilot stitchers for both. I’ll post about it.

I also have some ideas for making needlepoint products more available, getting new products out and creating some new ways of feeding our passion for needlepoint using this wonderful world of the Internet.

Now back to stitching.

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My Needlepoint Resolutions

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

With my daughters home for Christmas and some pending deadlines, I’m thinking posting will be spotty at best this week.

But I woke up thinking about my resolutions for needlepoint this year. I’m hoping ( as I always do) that by the end of the year I will be more organized, more projects will be finished and my stash will be smaller.

Many of these ideas you can easily adopt for yourself.

1. Finish 1 UFO per month. I realized I have MANY works in progress and that finishing up some of them would make me happier. I try to do this every year but most years it doesn’t work.

2. Stitch five projects from canvases in my stash. I’d like it to be more, but life intervenes.

3. Use up 100 threads from my stash. I’m looking at my thread count and think if I achieved this while I continue to stitch from my stash I’d be very happy.

4. Finish 15 stitched but unfinished needlepoint projects into items of one sort or another and give them away or use them. I have lot of needlepoint and getting it out of the boxes would be very good.

Tomorrow, the business resolutions.

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Storing Needlepoint

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

Yesterday was the day after Christmas and, like mushrooms, organizing supplies appeared in all the stores.

In my email I got a question from Mert, who asked:

Over 30 years ago my mother needlepointed a Christmas tree skirt, Christmas stockings, and many ornaments. We have been storing them in plastic boxes for at least the past 30 years. This year, getting them out it suddenly occurred to me that this might not be the best way to store them. I have searched for the proper way to store needlepoint and I have not been able to find an answer. Would you please advise me on the best way to preserve these for future generations?

Since I have lots of needlepoint for Christmas, I tried different things. I felt uncomfortable storing my needlepoint ornaments and stockings in plastic or in cardboard boxes, so for many years I have stored them in cotton pillowcases. I kept these on the shelves in my garage but not in anything.

But about a year ago we were moving and I needed to find permanent storage for a collection of vintage clolthing we have. I was worried about storing them in plastic, so I did some research. This is what museums do to store textiles.

Wrap the items in acid-free tissue paper. Kreinik sells it, as do several on-line merchants, It keeps the textiles from coming in contact with the acids in wood and regular paper. Them put the wrapped items into plastic boxes. These don’t need to be any particular kind, but they need to have tops and no holes. This keeps bugs out.

That’s it. So the paper protects the items while the plastic bin keeps the bugs out. And keep them mostly away from light. Light, acid (paper), and bugs are the main enemies of textiles. So this method protects them from all three.

I was surprised, but it does make sense to me.

If you want to do some more research, I’d look for items about storing vintage textiles, especially wools. Needlepoint is essentially a textile, so the advice for them will work for needlepoint.

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Great Stitch – Double Stitch

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

double cross stitch for needlepoint from Rittenhouse Needlepoint

Rittenhouse Needlepoint’s Stitch of the Week, pictured above, is Double. It’s not a well-known stitch, but it’s a good one.

Double is combination of two cross stitches, a regular cross and an oblong cross. I love it for places where a strong texture is needed in a relatively small space. It’s great for mountains, nubby fabrics, sweaters, or to give texture to lots of leaves.

Try it out!

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Merry Christmas to All!

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in Nuts About Needlepoint

Though my big nativity isn’t nearly so complex, my DH did buy me new figures, a new shop and cart for the town and a chicken coop. It’s gotten so big we are considering leaving it up year-round.

May your Christmas be wonderful, blessed, fun and full or good food.

And maybe even some stitching.

Thanks for being a supporter of this blog!

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Stitches, Thread Color and “Show Through”

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

Over the weekend I got asked about starting and ending threads on a piece where there are lots of different colors and coverage.

This got me thinking about “show through” and how it applies to needlepoint.

You almost certainly have been told to stitch light colors first. And I thought, for a long time, that this mainly applied to wools. That’s only partially true. It applies to wooly and furry threads because the tendrils of the thread got twisted up in each other. Light in dark will have little effect, dark in light will mess up the color.

But it does apply to other threads as well for a different reason. Depending on the stitch, threads traveling behind the color may show more or less. The darker the color the less this will show. That’s one reason why teachers encourage you to start and stop your threads under the same color. If you start and stop your thread behind a darker color, it will show less.

The principle at work here is that since needlepoint canvas is more holes than cloth, stitches are needed to make the cloth complete. Crossing a thread behind bare canvas or lightly stitched canvas will show more than crossing thread behind already stitched canvas.

This is true no matter the color.

So when you are planning your stitching, look for more heavily stitched and darker color for passing threads. Also, if you will be needing to skip some canvas between two areas the same color, think about parking your thread after one, stitching what’s in between and then stitching the other. You won’t have show through problems.

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Two Present Ideas from Orna Willis

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

Orna has two delightful ideas for needlepoint presents.

First is her new kit. Key Matters. It’s a delightful keychain kit that is complete. There is a charming pattern in Orna’s style, a metal frame and finishing instrctions. The finished piece is about 1″ x 3″ and Orna’s says it does not take more than 24″ of any individual thread, so it’s perfect for a stash project. You can buy it directly on Orna’s site for $18.

The other is her set of A Year in Cards, 20% off until December 24. The package includes cards, canvas, instructions and threads in your choice of eight colorways. Each card has a different design on it. You stitch the project, then attach the canvas to the front of the card to maker a gift for someone else.

Both these would be so much fun to make.

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