Originally posted 2008-09-13 06:46:25. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
The success of the recent Stitch in Public Day has gotten me thinking about ways to promote needlework.
Here are some ideas, which are easy to do:
- Make sure your guild’s meeting are listed on the events page in your local papers and at your meeting location
- Make an 8.5″x11″ poster, so anyone can print it, and hang it on any community event board you know of, such as in the library
- Does a library, civic building, or school have free exhibit space for non-profits, have your chapter put one together.
- Stitch in Public yourself. I have a friend who does her needlepoint on the ferry on her way to work. She has gotten several other commuters interested in needlepoint.
- Make a bookmark about your meetings and put it in local crafts and needlework shops. Maybe expand this and go to knitting shops, bead stores and other crafts stores.
- Where do your local moms hang out while they wait for their kids, offer a free needlepoint lesson to them in conjunction with the tutoring center or program
- Lead a stitching lesson for a local Girl Scout troop or 4-H club.
- Get involved with demonstrating at your local county or town fair
- Wear and use your needlepoint items daily.
If you’ve have some good ideas, add them to the comments.
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Publicize your Guild & Promote Needlepoint
Originally posted 2003-10-08 07:14:47. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
TYPES OF COLOR SCHEMES
Color schemes are so fascinating to me. You can spend a lifetime jiggling with them and still be surprised. Medium and technique change how colors work together and getting comfortable with the different types of color schemes can make your needlepoint sing.
I tend to classify color schemes into four broad groups, all of which have several sub-types.
Monochromatic color schemes are made up of shades of a single color. many traditional Bargello patterns use this scheme. A monochromatic with neutral scheme has shades of one color with the addition of white, black or gray. A traditional toile is am example of this. Neutral color schemes are made up of beiges, browns, whites, black and grays. In many cases a monochromatic color scheme greatly benefits from changes in texture since the color is so controlled.
Complementary color schemes take advantage of the natural complements of each color. Complementary colors are usually found across from each other on the color wheel and include pairs like red-green, yellow-violet, and blue-orange. A complementary scheme can take advantage of different values in the color, such as a paring of pink with dark green (a personal favorite). If the two shades next to one of the complements are used, this is a split complementary scheme. This red would be paired with yellow-green and blue-green. If both parts of the complement are used, making a set of four, this is a double split complement, a scheme which can be a bit hard to handle. A powerful and popular version of complementary schemes are near complements, such a red with blue. Taken just by themselves these colors often vibrate against each other. Tempered with white of black, either make tints or adding white to the scheme, you get classic combinations like red, white and blue or baby blue and pink.
Analogous color schemes use three or more colors next to each other on the color wheel. These schemes are naturally harmonious and don’t have to be confined to the hot or cool colors. Right now I’m working on a autumnal scheme which is using orange, yellow and green. All three colors are united by having yellow in them, making a vibrant look.
Triad schemes use three colors, making a triangle on the color wheel. The triad of primary colors (red, yellow, blue) is one triad. But other kinds of triangles can be formed, creating new places to explore color.
With threads, the stitcher has an almost unlimited palette of colors for developing color schemes. Use your threads to try out some new combinations!
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Read the original:
Types of Color Schemes
Originally posted 2008-02-19 08:12:31. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
I’m cleaning up my hard disk today and found a spreadsheet sent to me ages ago from Jane Wood of great ideas she had collected from many people for ways to use needlepoint.
I’d like to share them with you.
If you have run out of space on your walls for needlepoint, why not frame it and display it on an easel. Easels are available in many sizes from small and plate holders to large floor models.
If you have ornaments you love, why not keep them up all year long? They could dangle from doorknobs and cabinet knobs. They can decorate a bulletin board (I’ve had one of my favorites on my bulletin board for years. How about hanging small ones from the switch for a lamp? Or keeping a small branch in a decorative pot as a permanent display?
Another use for ornaments, or any small needlepoint is to mount them on sticks (I like them best painted) and put a bunch of them in a pot, like Cynthia Thomas did with these candy canes. Or among some plants, like Tish did with her new series.
A framed needlepoint with a wide, relatively flat frame can be a great base for a tray. Make sure the needlepoint has glass on it. Use clear silicone caulk to seal the edge between glass and frame. Add little feet to each corner in the back and use cabinet handles of the top sides for handles. In order to fit them, you need a wide frame. It’s the easiest and most distinctive tray you will ever make.
You could even do this with a small frame which is more dimensional. Frame the needlepoint add small handles and use it to hold jewelry.
Add a ribbon from top corner to top corner of a small pillow and use it as a door hanger. Fill it with lavender and hand it in the closet as a sachet.
Over the next few months, I’ll be adding some lists of more great ways to use needlepoint.
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New Ideas to Display Needlepoint
Originally posted 2006-11-11 07:46:46. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
I finished this little Petei buffalo for my son this week and it caused some problems, but I found a solution I want to share with you.
Conventional needlepoint wisdom says brush your needlepoint (to make it furry) last, after all other stitching is done. This is for a good reason, it keeps you from having to worry about hairs getting in the rest of the stitching.
And I planned to do that. But the two colors of thread were so close, I couldn’t tell where the Wisper ended (the furry front) and the Designer’s Dream began.
So I had to brush before I had done much stitching on the back.
And I brushed, lots, making it really furry. Then I brushed the furry parts over with my finger AWAY from the area I still needed to stitch. Along the border between the threads, I did Continental to create a buffer.
Yes, it was slower to stitch, and yes, I had to move the longer strands out of my stitching every now and again. I wouldn’t recommend this unless you had to do it, but it does, in fact. work.
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Making Hair
Toxic chemicals, separate vessels, many precautions, like many people I look for alternatives to chemical dyes. Ideally they would be easy to do, safe around children and pets, and wouldn’t absolutely require me to use different tools and pots (because I don’t know where to put them).
Inventive knitter and dyer Lee Meredith comes rushing to my rescue. You’ve read about Lee before. I’ve profiled her, tried her hand-dyed yarns recycled from sweaters, and adapted her game knitting ideas to needlepoint. Today I want to talk about her wonderful tutorials on dyeing.
Lee’s first two tutorials about Kool-aid dyeing have been updated. The first part discusses her basic method and how to get a variegated yarn with Kool-aid. This part also has some great links to other sites about Kool-aid dyeing, including one to a color chart. The second part covers making self-striped yarns. These yarns are wrapped and then painted with dyes in irregular stripes. In knitting they make striped patterns which give the yarns their name. Many multi-color needlepoint yarns are made this way as well.
Earlier this week she refined her methods showing us how to use a Crock-pot and several kinds of Kool-aid to get a wonderful spotty hand-dyed yarn.
There are several things I love about this method, which Lee does incredibly well. First off it’s non-toxic, so you can do it in your kitchen with no problems. Second, it’s incredibly cheap. Kool-aid is often 10 cents at the grocery store, crockpots are always available at thrift shops, and animal fiber yarns (i.e.wool) can be easy to find or are already in your stash. Third, with experimentation you can get colors and effects that will be unique and not found in commercial thread.
One note for success in dyeing (Lee also notes this). There are three types of fibers: animal (silk and wool of various kinds(, vegetable (cotton and linen) and man-made. Each type of fiber needs to be dyed with different dyes and reacts with color differently. Kool-aid works with animal fibers. I’ve tried it with cotton and the results are much lighter and less stable.
Dyeing my own threads is something I have dabbled with since I was a teenager. My first needlepoint stitch sampler, done in 1977, used all hand-dyed yarns. I have taken classes, tried many techniques and still find the process fascinating. I’m off to find a crock pot (it’s 50% off day at one local thrift store) and I’m pulling some of my lighter wools and silk wools from my stash for dyeing.
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The rest is here:
Non-toxic Dyeing of Wool and Silk Yarns
Originally posted 2007-07-05 06:52:45. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
C&T Publishing, http://www.ctpub.com, $16.95
Do you find yourself struggling with the question of whether these colors go together? Do you wish you could change the colors in a design and know they will go together?
Then this tool, created for quilters, is for you. Unlike color wheels, the tool doesn’t demand that you know something about color but works on a principle of matching.
The tool spreads out like a painter’s fan of colors which makes it easy to carry around and hold up to threads. It starts with a introduction to the color wheel and to the five basic plans for creating a color scheme.
Then comes the heart of the tool, the 24 cards devoted to the colors on their color wheel. Each card covers a single color. At the top of the card is the pure hue and its name. This is the biggest swatch on the card. Along one side of the card are smaller swatches showing the shading range from the lightest tint to the darkest shade. The pure hue is in the middle. Along the other side are three sets of tones (color + gray). One uses a tine with gray, the second uses the pure hue with gray and the third combines shades with gray.
One way to use this side of the tool is to find the match of a color of thread. On my desk at the moment is a shade of Watercolours, Bittersweet, which looks red-orange to me. And indeed, I find its closest match is pure orange-red.
Now comes the cool part — the backside of the card. For each color in the tool, five color schemes are developed. Monochromatic, complementary, analogous, split complementary and triadic color schemes are found for this color. Each color in the scheme is identified by its card number, so it’s easy for you to find the other colors in the scheme and then match those cards to your thread.
If I decide I want a complementary scheme, I find the complement to be aqua blue. If I turn to that card I find anther whole range of colors to go with my orange-red thread, ranging from just a hint of blue to a wonderful deep teal. I can already see, just by looking at the swatches, some great possibilities for needlepoint, and I was picking a thread at random.
Imagine how great this will be when planning a project.
That’s two of the three tools. The third is a value finder. Knowing the value of a particular thread can be difficult, especially when comparing colors. The tool has two sheets of colored plastic, one red, one green. Using these filters you can put them over a series of threads, of different colors and you will see how the value of each compares. This will liven your needlepoint by preventing monotone color schemes where the values of two different colors are too close and the needlepoint becomes flat and uninteresting.
This is an outstanding tool, one you’ll turn to again and again.
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3-in-1 Color Tool – Product Review
Last week Cp asked me about finding sources to make a belt for a fencer. While I haven’t seen any belts for this specifically, it occurred to me that any stitcher has the resources to make a unique and personal belt for any activity. Although I’m using fencing as an example, you can do this for any activity or event.
What about making a school days belt for a child? Or a swimming belt for a member of the swim team? Or just a memory belt?
This is easier than it might seem because belts are mostly the same size. They are usually stitched on 14 mesh canvas and are 21 stitches wide which, if you think about it isn’t much. Since belts aren’t seen all at once, their patterns repeat, so that also works in your favor because you don’t have to design as much, just repeat what you have.
I can think of two approaches to doing the design. The first is to use words associated with the activity. So for fencing you might use things like touche, parry, saber, epee, and duel. Chart these out in letters about 12-15 stitches high. You could stagger their bottoms so they look less rigid or use different colors, fonts, and other things to make them less dull. While this would be easy to do, you really would need to look at a lot of different alphabet books and sites to find enough letters to make it look interesting.
The second approach would be to chart out, or find, little charts of items associated with the activity. So for fencing, I’d use the different swords and probably a mask and a glove. As long as you keep the width less than 19 stitches (to leave space on either side), you’re fine for the belt. You would alternate the motifs in a regular way. For example, you’d have something like: crossed foils, glove, saber, mask, going the length of the belt. You would leave 7-10 stitches between the motifs.
If the belt is being made for someone specific you could also throw in perhaps a medal, a trophy, or the names of tournaments to make it more specific. You could also combine the two approaches.
When you are out looking for motifs, look for cross stitch charts. Those without partial stitches can be stitched as is for needlepoint. Also broaden your search to find sources that might not be as obvious. For example, the crossed swords might be part of a pirate chart and then you could narrow the blades to make the more like epees, or change the grip to make them like foils. A medal might be found with other sports charts. A ladies glove chart could be lengthened and broadened at the bottom to become a gauntlet and if the fingers were delicate, they could be broaden a bit.
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Designing your own Needlepoint Belt
