flowers

Woven Ribbon – Product Review

December 5, 2012 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

needlepoint with sequins and wonder ribbon, stitched by needlepoint expert janet m. perry

With Woven Ribbon from The Collection, it’s easy to make realistic bows.

Woven Ribbon from The Collection is a 6mm metallic ribbon. It comes in zipper bags wound on clear plastic bobbins (like sewing machine bobbins). Like Flair or Rachel, it is a braided tube in construction.

The package tells you how it is constructed. It is woven “from brass, copper and/or aluminum and is coated in enamel and lacquered to prevent color change.” Because of this it is waterproof and heat resistant. Of less importance to us as stitchers, it is also nickel free.

I used most of a package to do the ribbon on my ornament. I was delighted to find that I could apply it to the canvas easily by enlarging the hole slightly and pulling it through with a #22 needle, the same size I used for the stitching.

I was surprised at how nicely it compressed so that I didn’t need to make a special effort to use it. I did, however, find that the stiff wires made using a needle threader essential.

Unless the length is very short, you will need to attach Wonder Ribbon to the canvas. Because the ribbon compresses to go through the canvas, you will need to expand it for complete coverage at the ends. I did this easily by bringing my needle with the fine metallic out of the canvas along the end, then catching just a bit of the edge of the ribbon. I then put my needle back through the canvas and the ribbon was pulled and expanded to cover. I repeated this process as often as needed for coverage at both ends.

In the straight areas, I laid the length of the ribbon and then attached it at the sides with matching #4 Kreinik. Any fine metallic could be used, this was what I had that matched. The sides were attached the same way, grabbing a bit of the ribbon’s edge and attaching it. The ribbon laid smoothly.

For the curvy bow, I used a slightly different process. I brought the ribbon out at the knot, so it would be covered later. I left it hang loose and attached around the outside of the first loop. Then it went over the knot and I attached around the outside of the second loop.

After the outsides of both loops were done, I put the end of the thread through to the back of the canvas. I then stitched the insides of both loops, followed by both sides of the end. Voila — the best bow I’ve ever made!

The card in each package has many other suggestions for using this ribbon. I can’t wait to do more and share them with you.

Please note: Samples of this product were provided to me for purposes of review and designing.

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Woven Ribbon – Product Review

Filed Under: Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: embellishment, flair-or-rachel, flowers, knot, length, needlepoint, product, ribbon, the-collection, threads, woven-ribbon

Color, Needlepoint, & Van Gogh

July 6, 2012 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

Originally posted 2008-06-18 06:56:42. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

On Sunday I was watching the Impressionist disc of the BBC series Private Life of a Masterpiece (available from Netflix) and the second and third episodes really struck me.

The second was about Van Gogh’s famous sunflowers, which is in The National Gallery in London. I’m not a huge fan of Van Gogh’s but this is a painting I really like. Take a look at it. It’s almost all yellow, and most of the yellows are shades of yellow-orange. It’s the only one of his 11 sunflower paintings which has a yellow background and it livens the study so much, the painting glows. In the museum it is against a pale blue-violet wall which is the complement and so it glows even more.

The sunny colors and the restricted color scheme add to the painting’s greatness. But two other things heighten it. First the greens and browns in the flowers are all echo the yellows. Brown is a dark shade of orange and most of the greens are more green than yellow. Second, the blue line and the signature add a welcome contrasting note which makes the yellows more vivid.

The background isn’t flat, it’s textured, very subtly. As we do with stitches, Van Gogh did with paint, he deliberately used the texture of his brushstrokes to tell the story. And I didn’t know but Van Gogh used scraps of what looked like Tapestry wool to test color combinations. He had a little box of them he carried around. I think I’m going to try that too.

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Color, Needlepoint, & Van Gogh

Filed Under: Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: bbc, color, color in needlepoint, creating-color, flowers, greens, impressionist, needlepoint, promoter, signature, study, tell-the-story, van gogh, yellows

Mesh Size, Resolution & Stitchable Needlepoint

July 3, 2012 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

Originally posted 2008-04-23 07:25:48. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about what makes needlepoint which is both stitchable and which has results which are appropriate to both the medium and the subject.

I think I’ve identified one aspect of this, the resolution of the design as regards the subject.

It’s easiest if I explain it with an example. Let’s say I want to make a picture of a flower. The fewer details I have, the less it resembles the real flower. You can readily see this if you think about photos of flowers. Close-ups provide tons of detail, but if I take a picture from many feet away, the flowers are blobs of color we only identify as flowers because we “know” that they are flowers. Our mind provides the context and the identification.

In a way this is a problem of resolution, the lower the resolution, the more abstracted the design or object will be.

When it comes to human figures or animals, the less detailed the image, the more it becomes like a cartoon.

I was thinking about a piece I stitched on a commission awhile ago. It was of a cherub-like figure and I didn’t like it much. It was based on an old piece of art, probably Rococo. And the original was probably quite nice. But it was painted on 12 mesh canvas. The canvas resolution forced the design to be almost a cartoon of the original. The grace and the beauty of the piece was lost to the lack of detail.

Now in terms of physically being able to stitch the piece, this design was stitchable. In terms of having a lovely and appropriately beautiful piece for the hours of work put into stitching, it was not worth it.

On the converse I’ve seen plenty of canvases painted on 18 mesh because that’s what people like which could as easily be painted on 14 mesh without the loss of detail. These too are physically stitchable, but take longer than they should to stitch and may not reward you for that time.

Today, most painted canvases are on 18 mesh. Most threads are designed for this size canvas as well. But I have seen plenty of pieces which didn’t need to be on this mesh size. The detail isn’t lost on a larger mesh, so why make more work for yourself. It would make me terribly happy if designers thought about this (many do) and didn’t just automatically go for the finer mesh.

I’ll use a couple of other examples of appropriate use of mesh size from two f my designer friends. My friend Kelly Clark designs charming Santas and they come in two sizes, 14 and 18 mesh. They are both stitch painted and are exactly the same. The only difference is the finished size. By going from one mesh to the other, Kelly loses no detail. As a stitcher I chose the mesh size which works best for me.

My friend Leigh Richardson paints incredibly detailed canvases, like her amazing new shells and sand castles. They are large, detailed and on 18 mesh. But try to imagine how much detail would be lost if they were the same finished size and on 13. The detail would be gone. Instead of having a shell I can recognize from my collection, I would have a general shell and one which would be abstract and less beautiful.

There are many approaches to painting canvas and many solutions to this problem.

So the next time you look for canvases think about the resolution. It may be a gut reaction (I only now, 8 months later, figured out the problem with the cherub), but does the mesh size work to make the design as it was intended to be. Or is it too small or too large a mesh?

As consumers of needlepoint we have great control of the designs we buy and see. Don’t settle for the wrong mesh size for the design. Hold out for the possibility of good art.

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Mesh Size, Resolution & Stitchable Needlepoint

Filed Under: Design, Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: beauty, change-the-mesh, Design, designer, flowers, identification, image, large-mesh, mesh, needlepoint, problem, project, promoter, resolution, subject

What’s in a Pattern Name?

July 3, 2012 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

Geometrics and florals, I can probably point those out pretty easily. But what is a “conversation print?”

In fabric terms a conversation print is any print that is not a floral or a geometric. While we, as stitchers don’t think about our canvases in these terms, it’s good to understand what fabric and design people mean by these three classes of prints. Then we can more easily apply them to our own work.

A geometric design is anything that is an abstract or non-representational design. These can run from stripes or polka dots to a complex painting by Alexander Calder.

What is common to all of these is that they don’t represent anything. As stitchers we love them. Many of our pieces fall into this category.

needlepoint fall maple leaf stitched from outline by janet perry

A floral design is one that pictures flowers or, more broadly, vegetation. The Autumn Leaf ornament pictured above is a floral, and so is the far more abstract Bargello by Jeannette Clark pictured below it.

Florals can be small or large, realistic or abstract. What is common about them all is that they depict plant life.

Conversation print found on Solstice Studio blog

In fabric everything else is a conversation print. I used to think that this meant only those prints which might spark a conversation, such as the fabric with a cricket playing billards pictured above. But, in reality, this is an “everything else” category.

For us, as stitchers it is also the least useful. We stitch so many other things: people animals, clothing, teacups, trains, and on and on. That gets to the heart of what makes needlepoint more like painting than like sewing or quilting. In needlepoint we are depicting something. No matter how we are finishing our canvas it is often a picture in the same way a painting is a picture. So conversation prints don’t make much sense to us. We are stitching landscapes or elephants not using a conversation print.

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What’s in a Pattern Name?

Filed Under: Design, Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: abstract-or-non, conversation print, creative, everything-else, fabric-design, flowers, jeannette, jeannette-clark, leaf-stitched, mosaic-stitch, needlepoint, pattern, small-or-large, solstice-studio

Victorian Motto Shoppe Hand-dyed Floss – Thread Review

May 3, 2012 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

lee needle art needlepoint fan ornament stitched by needlepoint expert janet m. perry in hand-dyed threads

This eBay seller mostly specializes in charts and frames with an old-fashioned flair, including perforated paper kits, motto charts and Quaker designs. In addition they sell hand-dyed floss and trims.

Recently I bought one of their floss sets, Peony, and used it to stitch this vintage Lee mini-fan.

They are available as sets, usually of four related colors, in 20 yard skeins. They use DMC floss as the base. The color sets are derived from the colors dyed for the company’s kits.

Because the colors are generally limited editions, there is no guarantee you’ll be able to find them again. Sometimes colors are identified on the tags, sometimes not. Although the colors are usually sold in sets, you may also find single skeins from time to time.

In addition to the floss, often there are hand-dyed trims, seam ribbons, and perle cottons.

The green and light pink (white) in the background are this floss, as are the two duller fuchsias of the flowers. The floss was easy to use. AS you can see from the fan pictured here, the colors are subtly varied, which gives a nice effect.

I was able to use them in several different ways in the fan including T Stitch, Four-way Continental, and two different directions of Continental.

The floss is lovely, but I would only use it as an accent thread. Being limited editions and not having color names or numbers, it might be difficult or impossible to find the same or even similar thread if needed.

Great colors, nice thread, but of limited use to needlepointers.

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Victorian Motto Shoppe Hand-dyed Floss – Thread Review

Filed Under: Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: art needlepoint, background, colors, dragonfly lotus, floss, flowers, from-the-colors, hand-dyed threads, overdyed threads, satin-floss

Make Roses Easily with this Video

February 19, 2012 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

In BeStitched wonderful series of needlepoint videos, they have one for a great “more bang for the buck” technique. It shows how to use silk ribbon and loose bullion knots to make lovely simple ribbon roses.

I was, I admit, skeptical because bullions are not my favorite stitches, but this technique is so simple and so lovely that you’l start looking for canvases with swathes of roses just so you can try it.

Click on the link above to learn how.

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Make Roses Easily with this Video

Filed Under: Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: beading, fantastic-video, flowers, laying, needlepoint, ribbon roses, roses, scrapbook, start-looking, stitching, technique, tips, Video

Ribbon Flowers Videos from BeStitched

November 6, 2011 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

BeStitched has two new videos up, both on making ribbon flowers.

These make wonderful, dimensional additions to your needlepoint, that are lovely, easy, and unexpected.

Watch the first one here.

Watch the second one here.

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Ribbon Flowers Videos from BeStitched

Filed Under: Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: both-on-making, embellishment, flowers, learn-some, learning, needlepoint, needlepoint videos, needlework, ribbon, ribbon flowers, silk ribbon embroidery, technique, the-first, the-second, videos

Four Way Bargello Flowers from Judy Harper

October 10, 2011 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

Originally posted 2009-01-05 06:33:49. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

We’ve been following Judy Harper’s delightful series of Four Way Bargello designs featuring flowers.

She’s added some new posts focussing on making the flowers in the center. These are using the spring colors and have different borders. The post on POSSIBILITIES, etc! shows how the flower is developed inside the egg shape and how the border works out around it.

Another series of posts focuses on putting this design into the egg. That’s great because since the shape is different, it’s not intuitive how to center the design so it looks fantastic. One post shows the finished egg and talks about the threads used and includes some tips about using cotton. The second post shows in detail how to draw the egg and place the pattern. It also includes the chart for the border.

The post on FREEBIES, etc! has the chart for this flower, placed inside a circle.

The previous posts on this blog about the series talked about the first in the series, an octagon in Christmas colors and about putting Four Way designs into other shapeshttp://www.nuts-about-needlepoint.com/?p=1296.

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Four Way Bargello Flowers from Judy Harper

Filed Under: Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: bargello, been-following, Design, flowers, inside-the-egg, simple-four-way, since-the-shape, spring, update-on-judy

Cute Idea for Plastic Canvas

April 4, 2011 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

I saw this Friday on Must Have Cute. If your know video games, these are Fire Flowers made on plastic canvas using floss. They are then cut out and glued to a simple hair clip. They are available, I think, on Etsy.

But isn’t this a fantastic (and easy) finishing idea. If you use 14-count plastic canvas, they’ll look delicate and you won’t have to buy any special thread.

Next week, I’ll have a post on a book that’s a great source for small motifs that would be perfect here.

This could be a delightful Easter present!

Link:
Cute Idea for Plastic Canvas

Filed Under: accessories, Nuts About Needlepoint Tagged With: accessories, another-plastic, easter, finishing needlepoint, flowers, friday, friday-on-must, great-plastic, leftover, made-on-plastic, permanent-link, podcast, video-games

Berlinwork-inspired Cushion – Free Design

August 7, 2010 by NutsAboutNeedlepoint · Leave a Comment

If you are nuts about the look of Victorian Berlinwork and Elizabeth Bradley kits, you also probably can’t get enough of them. But often there are obstacles in the way of doing them often. The first obstacle is size, those pieces are BIG and sometimes you want something small and fast. The second obstacle is price. The kits are expensive and often you want something you can stitch from stash.

Star, a great needlepointer and art historian living in Italy loves them too and has come up with her own original designs, inspired by Berlinwork charts. There are nine of them, designed to be stitched together into a pillow top. You could also make them individually as ornaments.

To day and for the next two weeks, we’ll write about the charts. I love them because they are so small and have such character. The colors on the charts are bright, to make them easy to read, but stitch them in muted wools or silk on a dark background and you have lovely new Berlinwork designs.

The first three charts are:

You can get all four parts: