mind

For me, if the UFO’s are more or less corralled then I feel as if I am keeping the forces of chaos away from my door.

Deciding what constitutes a UFO instead of a “project on hiatus” what you store with it, and where that all goes can be a complex process, different for each stitcher.

Here’s how I do it and along the way you might find some tips to help you organize.

I would love to be one of those organized people who keep things neat and only work on a project or so at once. But I’m not and never will be, so this at least keeps me somewhat in control.

Triage

Deciding what kind of UFO a project is makes a HUGE first step to getting organized. When you go to the emergency room they call this triage, we can apply the same idea of quick classification to our needlepoint.

There are three kinds of UFO’s:

Projects currently being worked on
UFO’s you’ll get to soon
UFO’s you’ll egt to “someday,” or projects on hiatus

I’ll talk about each one in turn and how I store them.

Current Rotation

I am never without several projects going on at the same time. And my current projects range from models for classes, new projects for the needlepoint clubs, projects that will be used on the blog, gifts, stitch guide projects, new designs, and Sunday stitching (stitching for me).

Each of these projects lives in a project bag and sits somewhere around the house. I know when there are too many of these and I need to clean up when my DH complains about needlepoint being “everywhere.”

As soon as something is done, it goes to my office with the threads, gets taken off the stretcher bars and the project bag gets used for the next thing. Sometimes I have used a basket to keep these together but at the moment they are just piled around.

I like having these in bags, then I just pick one up to go someplace. I’m happiest if there are only five of these floating around. Right now I think I have six, so I need to get one done and none are very close.

UFO’s

These are projects that aren’t currently in the rotation but will be as soon as a space opens up. I used to keep them in piles in the office, but now I have them put in a tote I’m not using next to my desk.

These pieces are on stretcher bars and in project bags. To start work on them I just need to add needles and scissors and go.

Projects on Hiatus

A project on hiatus is one I intend to finish but has no deadline or compelling reason to be completed. If I have taken a class and learned what I needed to from it, I’ll take it out of hiatus and donate it or give it away. So every project here is one I plan to do. This is one of those parts of my stash I go through about every six months to be sure I haven’t changed my mind about any of these projects.

These live in the same dresser drawer as the large unstitched canvases. Mostly they are in plastic bags although some are in project bags. Usually, but not always, if something goes into this pile, I take it off the stretcher bars.

In theory if I take something from my UFO bag, I take one of these projects and put it in. But usually, I’m afraid, a new UFO has intervened.

Plastic Canvas Podcast

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

Originally posted 2008-07-30 07:58:36. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

delightful little house made of plastic canvas

Plastic Canvas, more than any other kind of needlepoint, has a bad reputation. Even among needlepointers. For most people it conjures up picture of tissue boxes, acrylic thread, and garish colors. I know, my beloved Grandmother loved plastic canvas and I have several pieces she did.

But plastic canvas can be hip and fun and is a wonderful basis for making all kinds of three dimensional needlepoint.

14 count plastic canvas can use the same threads as 18 count needlepoint canvas and can be finished without any trouble.

I found a wonderful podcast and article about using plastic canvas. In the article there are lots of links to supplies and information.

So, open your mind and try this great material.

Continue reading here:
Plastic Canvas Podcast

Changing Colors

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Design,Nuts About Needlepoint

Originally posted 2007-09-27 08:23:54. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

I just finished stitching the second of Judy Harper’s delightful mitered Bargello ornaments. Judy is planning on having them available soon.

You saw the first one at the top of this post.

Judy’s version is pictured on the left, mine is on the right.

I call it my Brazilian parrot Bargello because the vivid green reminds me of parrot feathers.

I like the combination of the two because we need to learn to be more adventurous in our use of color. It’s hard, I know, but making small things like ornaments is a perfect way to go. They don’t take long to stitch, they don’t have to go with anything, and, you only need to see them a few weeks each year.

So how do you pick a color scheme when you have a charted geometric piroject. Begin by looking at the threads called for in the project. You should, as much as possible, substitute using the same threads.

Then pick a color theme. In my case it was a skein of Tentakulum (from YLI) Painter’s Palette silk in Chagall. It is a vivid green with bits of rose, blue and violet. Those colors would be my accents. I used those colors to pick the threads for the rest of the design.

I had some blue-violet Flair so I used that. The white Flair in the center is the same as the original project. I originally picked a lighter pink, but I decided as I stitched, that I wanted something richer and more varied. So the rose at the center is a Weeks Perle. I didn’t stitch the middle and outer rounds of white initially. But I changed the outer line of Tent Stitch to a very pale pink. It looks almost white, but it is a bit softer. The outside green border is Lorikeet from Gloriana in a green which also reminds me pf parrot feathers.

Having picked these threads (all from my stash) and stitched with them, I was struck by how nice the greens looked against the white canvas. That was something I didn’t expect, I had been too lazy to go pick another ribbon thread.

At that point I decided to go with white for the open rings so that the greens would be accented as they were with the open canvas. Since the original has beads, and I didn’t have any, I used floss and T Stitch for the middle round. The outer round was more problematical. The original uses Flair and I had used most of my white Flair. I rooted through my stash and found this charming white/opal color of YLI’s Ribbon Floss Shimmer Blend. Because of the bit of metallic in it, it has some of the same texture as Flair, so it worked. But if it didn’t, I had planned to rip it out to try something else.

There are two things which hold us back from trying out different colors. One is that we don’t feel we can make good choices. This is easily solved by taking your color cues from overdyed threads. They are dramatic and beautiful and inspiring.

The second is that we feel we must pick everything out before we begin to stitch. DON’T. Pick what you feel sure of, then add or change as you go along. If I had picked all the colors at the beginning, this piece would have had a neon pink center, which would have been too much of a contrast with the green, a dark green border, which wouldn’t have reinforced the green of the overdye, and who knows what for the white Flair.

By letting the stitching show me what was needed, after the initial selection and by being willing to change my mind and adapt, I got a lovely result.

Don’t be afraid, try color!

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Changing Colors

Needlepoint as Meditation

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

Seth, a cartoonist, once wrote about drawing and thinking. When he draws half his mind runs free and he thinks about things, most of which don’t seem to be related to his drawing.

I think many of us do the same thing when we stitch, I know I do. Sometimes stitching helps me work out a problem, sometimes it gives me an idea, but when I stitch my mind travels freely.

Although Seth says his thoughts often find their way into his work at the time, with needlepoint I don’t know that this is the case. But our state of mind often does, making the tension tight or loose, the stitches even or not.

I think that for many people the traditional approach to meditating might not work, we can’t shut out things. I’m certainly one of them.

But put a needle in my hand to distract me and I can think and meditate and pray. It being Ash Wednesday today, I’m going to put in a new practice for Lent, every day I’m going to stitch for 20 minutes without the TV on and use that time to meditate. That should do both my neglected projects and my soul good.

Continue reading here:
Needlepoint as Meditation

The Cricut Machine – A Brief and Intimate Look

in Scrapbooking

When you think of making a scrapbook, the first thing that comes into your mind is what pictures to place. This is fairly easy as all you need to do is to select pictures that highlight a specific event or happening in your life. Once this has been done, you now need to come up with the design for your scrapbook. Again, this is fairly easy as all that you need to do is base your selection on whatever event is being portrayed in your pictures. Let’s take for example, a wedding.

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The Cricut Machine – A Brief and Intimate Look

Cricut Projects – Ideas That Can Generate Income

in Scrapbooking

People actually think that the cricut machine is the one tool that is responsible for the conceptualization of the designs that we see in scrapbooks. Actually, the designs come from the mind of the user and are made tangible by the cricut cutting machine.

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Cricut Projects – Ideas That Can Generate Income

What To Look For When Buying Wholesale Beads

in Craft Shopping

Crafting is a great way to lessen stress, get your mind active, and pass time, plus it is just plain fun. One craft that is exceptionally fun is jewelry making.

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What To Look For When Buying Wholesale Beads

Videogame Needlepoint

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

Originally posted 2009-06-20 05:53:01. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Videogames of all kinds have such a wonderful graphic punch to them. The bright colors, the uncluttered design.

In the back of my mind I’ve always wanted to do some needlepoint of them, but haven’t. I recently found a wonderful Flickr album and a tutorial on how to do this yourself.

First, the album. It has almost 40 pictures of videogame needlepoint. A simple mushroom from the classic Centipede, that uses textured stitches effectively is a great example of the simple graphic style of earlier games. This elaborate design of King Galam, done in Tent Stitch, shows the more realistic style of Manga-influenced games.

I’m just loving the look of them.

If you want to adapt your own favorite video game characters to needlepoint, a process called “sprite stitching,” take a look at this detailed tutorial. It goes into real depth on the entire process, with tons of pictures.

You’ll learn how to capture a character, convert it to a stitchable chart with DMC colors, how to stitch the design in Tent Stitch, picking a background color, and stitching the background. It’s fantastic!

One final note, a videogame character makes an outstanding first needlepoint project, because the character has a black outline, which is then colored. If you want to introduce a child to needlepoint, add one more step to the process. Transfer the outline only of the character to canvas. The child then stitches the outline in black and fills in the colors.

If only I had known about this when my son was in junior high and crazy about Pokemon.

Continue reading here:
Videogame Needlepoint

A Startling Reality

in Craft Shopping

As I was sitting on one of the park’s benches along with my classmates for our group report, all of us ended completely blank. The topic was supposed to be about “paper and card”. Loads of ides came into my mind that time but I couldn’t figure out where to start with and on how to fix them together to achieve coherence.

Excerpt from:
A Startling Reality