art

Beginner Landscapes Stitch Technique Upcoming Book – Sneak Peak

September 5, 2012 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

Some landscapes, regardless of when they were painted or by what artist, are harder to interpret in needlepoint than others.

Compare a traditional landscape, even one by someone as recent as Van Gogh or Cezanne with the Donna Horn landscape above. These more flat landscapes are a perfect starting point for stitching and for exploring texture in landscape needlepoint.

Does the landscape you are about to stitch have distant hills or a lot of detail in the foreground? How do you distinguish the areas in the immediate foreground than the areas just behind it? Is the sky large, cloudy or raining? Is there a lot of bark or dense foliage?

There are many different types of stitches that can be used to great effect depending on whether you are trying realistically to stitch a bark, cloudy sky, or any of the above.

Our Beginner Landscapes Stitch Technique book will be available this Fall. Reserve your copy!

In this book you’ll learn techniques that are perfect for stitchers at any level, beginner to expert, learn to create wonderful landscape effects in needlepoint. Techniques that you can apply to any landscape canvas.

For a sneak peak at some of the suggested techniques in the book contact me or send an email to contact@artneedlepoint.com with sneak peak in the subject line.

Originally posted here:
Beginner Landscapes Stitch Technique Upcoming Book – Sneak Peak

Filed Under: Books, Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: art, book, fall-reserve, needleblending, needlepoint, project-book, sneak peek, stitch guide, upcoming-class

The Needlepoint Art on your Walls

May 4, 2012 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

Originally posted 2007-03-29 22:21:29. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

A little while ago I got an email update from the marketing and forecasting company, Unity Marketing about what people put on their walls.

I stuck many chords with me, as I’m sure it will with you.

“If you want to know about the tastes and interests of the American consumer, you need only look at his or her walls” is the beginning of the article. Your choice of art, including needlepoint, reflects your tastes, you home’s decor, and you passion for needlepoint. Most of the art in my bedroom is needlepoint, and all of it is by one artist. Most of the pieces are small but the one over the bed is quite large.

When we bought the canvas (15 years ago) it was over $300 and the threads doubled that. But, as my husband said at the time “It’s art and you wouldn’t complain about spending that for a painting.”

He’s right. In stitching a piece of needlepoint, even if it is all Tent Stitch, you choose threads. color, and. often, stitches, bringing your vision for the piece and fusing it with that of the designer. If someone writes a stitch guide, the finished piece is a fusion of all three visions.

The article also talks about how it is becoming more important for people to be involved or to create, to some extent, the art on their walls.

As needlepointers, we’ve been way ahead of this trend. Our work is art, it does hang on our walls, and it does reflect our own personalities, or, if it’s a gift, the personalities of the recipient.

So now, the world is giving you permission to stitch, you are participating in adorning your walls with personalized art.

Stitching Mouldings

More:
The Needlepoint Art on your Walls

Filed Under: Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: art, article, designer, finished, marketing, mouldings, over-the-bed, personalities, promoter, recipient, someone-writes, unity-marketing, walls

Celtic Art in Cross Stitch – book review

February 12, 2012 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

Originally posted 2003-09-18 06:56:49. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Celtic Art in Cross Stitch Barbara Hammet

I just love Barbara’s two other books of cross stitch designs (Art Nouveau and William Morris), so I was delighted to see this new books. The book opens with a very good introduction about Celtic Art which looks at it from the point of view of design style and elements.

This is followed by ten chapters of projects related to each other by theme and color. For example, the chapter on La Tene (one of the earliest forms of Celtic art) consists of table linens including a beautiful tablecloth, napkins and coasters. In the instructions there is also information on varying these designs to make table toppers and runners.

For each project there is a full color picture of the completed stitching, a material list, a full-color chart and stitching instructions. A nice touch is the color chart which provides color numbers for the project for DMC, Anchor and Madeira threads. The number of skeins needed is also noted. This is so much simpler than having a conversion chart in the back of the book.

And if all these wonderful projects aren’t enough to get you excited, the book also has a fantastic Celtic Motif Library; 53 full color charts of borders, animals, geometrics and knotwork. Although charted in color, these designs can be combined and changed to suit your needs. In the notes at the beginning of the section, the patterns are divided into categories which show how they are related and each design is identified with a note about its source and some suggestions for using it.

The book ends with a chapter on materials and finishing.

Celtic design is one of the most evocative styles I have seen. But lovely as it is, it can be hard to adapt to needlework. Books like this outstanding one, which provide a wealth of designs and projects feed both the soul and the needle.

Read the original here:
Celtic Art in Cross Stitch – book review

Filed Under: Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: anchor-book, art, barbara-hammet, Books, celtic, color, cross stitch, library, outstanding, project, review

You Are a Part of the Creative Conversation!

December 21, 2011 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

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

I don’t like it when people criticize needlepoint saying it’s like “painting by numbers.” Being the daughter and granddaughter of very creative women, I have always seen, as have they, needlepoint as a very artistic and creative process.

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.

Go here to see the original:
You Are a Part of the Creative Conversation!

Filed Under: Design, Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: art, artist, below-the-falls, case, conversation, creative, creativity, daughter, falls, historic textiles, ideas, modern art, virtual

Adapting Randomly Cut Paper to Needlepoint

October 5, 2011 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

Originally posted 2008-11-12 04:58:46. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Santa Fe Needlepoint by Lorene Salt

Last month my friend Lorene Salt & her husband were visiting Napa Valley. We met for lunch and Lorene brought me pictures of her wonderful stitching. I was blown away thinking about the piece pictured above.

In fact I kept thinking about it. It was one of Lorene’s pieces for her Master Craftsman from the Embroiderers Association of Canada. It’s an adaptation anyone can do and so I asked her to share it with you.

This is what she says about the piece:

For this project I was told to cut a piece of black construction paper into various shapes. I was then supposed to glue it onto white paper as if it were an exploding diagram.

Once I had a design that I was happy with, I glued the black pieces on to the white paper. I then traced the design onto canvas. I then picked a colour scheme that I liked, in this case oranges and turquoises. I then started filling in the different areas with different stitches and threads.

From the picture you can see that the black paper pieces I stitched in the oranges and the thin turquoise parts are where the white paper showed through.

When finished, I stitched around the entire piece in black so that is framed the work inside.

She calls the piece Santa Fe, after the color scheme.

There are so many things I like about this piece. I love the color scheme (it’s one of my favorites) and I think she’s done a great job of using overdyed threads in a way that looks natural and not over the top.

I also love that her choice of stitches reinforces the shape of the areas. The ones which are sharply pointed have stitches which emphasize that fact. For example, the Random Rhodes which run diagonally all across the piece look like a river of stars to me. And the rhythmic Bargello really shows off that space.

When it comes to the turquoise area, the negative space of the design, they are packed with texture too. It would have been so easy to just pick a single stitch and use it everywhere, but the design would have been diminished that was. This additional texture makes you want to look at it and explore.

One last point, I’ve talked about Mary Shipp’s rule of 1-3-5 when doing needlepoint so that it looks balanced. One element, in this case the stitches, should predominate. A second element, in this case the colors, should have a middle amount. There are only two colors, but it looks like 20 stitches (by my count). The final element, in this case texture, should be severely limited. I think Lorene used only one or two kinds of thread. The coral is silk and the turquoise is either silk or cotton floss.

The cut paper technique is one often found in art books, and I have often wondered about it. Here you can see how something anyone can do can be taken to make wonderful needlepoint.

Thanks Lorene, for sharing!

Continued here:
Adapting Randomly Cut Paper to Needlepoint

Filed Under: Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: art, black, color, eac, embroiderers, graph-paper, lorene salt, master-craftsman, piece, project, random, white

Needlepoint and Art

September 22, 2010 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

Originally posted 2002-10-12 22:39:33. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

As a needlepointer, I find that often my work gets trivialized by
artists and by people who do other fiber arts. Needlepoint suffers
from a “little old lady” syndrome, which is completely out of sync
with the reality of the art we produce, which is often far more
advanced than what is done by other, more accepted arts.

As needlepointers we should carry the banner for acceptance of our
work as a fiber art.

We can do this in lots of ways small and large:

enter your pieces in the local fairs as art not as craft or
“home arts” You may not win prizes, but you will start to lay the
foundation.
carry your needlepoint with you, show off the work in your home
host an exhibit of your work at the local library, school or
shopping mall (often they will do this free for non-profits)
do you have a good story to tell, send a press release to the
local newspaper
create a gallery of your original work on your website and
list it in art directories

But most importantly, organizations like ANG can do much to promote
acceptance of our work as art. They need to make and keep to firm
rules about classifications, they need to read and accept the work of the artists when they submit and artist’s statement. They need to look at the classifications of original and adaptation in other
fields of endeavor and use those as a basis for classifying
needlepoint. They need to applaud those teachers who have created
new stitches and techniques and those stitchers who use these tools
to create original work. But most of all, the entire judging process needs to be free of the prejudice, rudeness, and disbelief of artist’s which has been appearing lately.

ANG has a bully pulpit as do other organizations in the field —
let’s ask them to use it to make us and our art better known!

The rest is here:
Needlepoint and Art

Filed Under: Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: art, artists, classifications, fiber-artists, guild, organizations, permanent-link, press-release, promoter, publicity, trading-cards, work

Wendy Costa’s Art Now Available in Needlepoint

February 8, 2010 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

Wendy Costa’s art has now been adapted to needlepoint and is available from Maggie Co.

There are nine whimsical dresses and two delightful veggie designs that would be great in a kitchen. They are on 18 mesh.

Social Bookmarking

Originally posted here:
Wendy Costa’s Art Now Available in Needlepoint

Filed Under: Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: art, been-adapted, charts, costa, designs, maggie, map, needlepoint, new products, permanent-link, preview, social-bookmarking, social-networking, wendy-costa

Kilim Designs in Needlepoint – Book Review

September 6, 2009 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

Dorothy Wood, (Ward Lock,London), 1998 out of print

I didn’t buy this book when it came out, since Kilims aren’t my favorite type of rugs. I found it at the library a couple of weeks ago, and now I regret my initial decision. This is a lovely and creative book, well worth seeking out.

The book has a short, but thorough introduction going over the history of Kilim (flat woven rugs from the same area as “Oriental” rugs), the people who make them, and the yarns and designs used. In this section there are many inspiring pictures of rugs and motifs.

The projects in the book are divided into three chapters, sorted according to the area where the rugs originated. Each area has nine projects and, because the designs have many motifs and borders, you could uses sections of them to make many more. For each project there is a color picture of the finished item, a clear material list, stitching and finishing instructions, and large, color charts.

Some of the projects are large, some small. There is a huge variety of them, something not often found in needlepoint books. Along with the expected pillows, there are wallhangings, footstools, tote bags, book covers, neck purses, and so much more.

At the end of the book there are short chapters on materials, equipment, and techniques, wrapping up an excellent book.

It’s out of print and the prices for used copies look high. This isn’t surprising considering how wonderful this book is. If you find one at a library sale or thrift store, pick it up, you won’t regret it. And if you have one you’d like to sell me, let me know.

Social Bookmarking

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Kilim Designs in Needlepoint – Book Review