white

painted stitches tree needlepoint, stitched by needlepoint expert janet m perry, vintage canvas by kris

I was so excited when I found the vintage canvas on eBay awhile ago. I like it because the stitches are already painted on, much as the wonderful designs of Barbara Bergsten are.

This type of needlepoint has the pattern of the stitch already there on the canvas, you pick your threads and follow along.

In the bottom left corner, you can see a patch I’ve already stitched, in Jacquard. The green line was painted on the canvas, I stitched that first and then filled in the cream.

The patch above will be Framed Scotch, I’m stitching the Scotch Stitches now and the white lines that frame the squares will be in Continental.

For some of the patches here, the stitch to use is quite clear, for others I’ll need to make some choices.

But if you are a beginner, or just want to expand your repertoire of stitches, look at Barbara’s great designs. She’s endlessly inventive and her painted stitches are just perfect and a joy to stitch.

With Painted Stitch canvases and a good stitch dictionary, you’ll learn tons of new stitches quickly.

P.S. In future posts, you’ll see this piece again because I’m using it to test three new threads.

Excerpt from:
Exploring the Painted Stitch Canvas

DIY Milk Glass

by Meg Allan Cole

in Home Decor,Recycle

DIY Fizzy Izze.jpg

The Colorful Living Project livens up discarded Fizzy Izze bottles with white spray paint. With just a coat or two you can make your own DIY milk glass.

More Eye Candy

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

You may think when you see something in color that it is actually printed or displayed in the color it is. But actually most printed and displayed things are created by using mixtures of just four colors.

While you might not think about it, you actually know this; it’s why you only buy three colored ink cartridges.

The colors are created by using different shades, mixtures and quantities of these four colors and you can look at pictures of these mixtures.

But Evelin Kasikov took this one step farther in her embroidered color chart. She used the cyan/magenta/yellow/black used in color printing as the basis.

It was part of an exhibit in London. The page showing this work much larger than pictured here has some thumbnails (linked to pages) of more of her work, often exploring CYMK, typography, and embroidery. While done in free Cross Stitch, it’s really cool.

A big shout out to my daughter who sent me the link to this.

More:
More Eye Candy

Sketching a Canvas

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

Originally posted 2006-08-05 06:55:21. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

HP Designs shadow stitches & sketched needlepoint

As you can see above, the shadow stitching piece is done.

I like the Shdow Stitching effect, but I really want to talk about another technique, my DH christened “Sketching with Thread”

Often we are attracted to a hand-painted canvas because of the delicacy of the lines, they are so compelling. But stitch the canvas and all of a sudden those delicate lines become thick, solid and often dotted.

Why?

For several reasons:

First, needlepoint stitches have a slant. If you keep the slant the same no matter the direction of the line, you will get solid lines in one direction and lines of bumps in the other.

Second, in an unstitched canvas all lines will look thinner because there is the white space of the holes. Once a canvas is stitched the holes are filled.

So how to preserve the delicacy of the lines even after stitching?

It’s easy.

First, thin the thread. While most of the leaves are stitched usiing four strands of floss, most of the darkest green is stitched using only two strands. Even in the parts where there are solid lines, the lines are thinner and more delicate. This allows those lines to be a transition between the thicker four floss lines and the very thin straight stitch ines using two strands.

Second, over stitch with thin threads. The veins of the leaves are stitched with single straight stitches using two strands. These are quite thin and because the canvas underneath is completely stitched, no paint shows. You can, as I did, just make up the stitching, or you can photocopy the canvas before you do the solid stitching to follow where the lines go.

Finally, change the slant of the stitch. To preserve the solid line, even if it’s thin, change the slant so that the line stays solid.

Tons of fun and it accomplished what I wanted.

Visit link:
Sketching a Canvas

Adapting Randomly Cut Paper to Needlepoint

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

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

Eye Candy – Kyoto Costume Institute

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

Most people don’t think of clothing as being a good source of inspiration for needlepoint, but it’s one of my favorite places to find color and motif ideas.

Especially high fashion (I once did a needlepoint inspired by a picture of a designer gown) and, even better, historic clothing.

The Kyoto Costume Institute has an amazing set of digital archives that’s full of inspiration.

And they aren’t just Japanese clothes, they span a range from the Eighteenth Century to today and incorporate tons of styles.

Why not use the stunning evening cape by Elsa Schiaparelli to inspire a gold and black fantasy of needlepoint. Or the boisterous floral print of a Victorian evening gown to color a fresh floral piece. It will look bright and modern, even though the gown that inspired it is over 150 years old.

Not only can you learn alot about fashion, you’ll get lots of ideas for new pieces.

See more here:
Eye Candy – Kyoto Costume Institute

Canvas Clips – Product Review

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint,tools

If you don’t mount your needlepoint on a frame, you have an on-going problem. I find that I feel as though I’m battling with the canvas all the time to find the place where I am stitching. I’m afraid I’ll stitch the canvas to itself and get cramps in my hands from scrunching up the canvas.

Canvas Clips from Dream House Ventures can solve many of these problems. The package has two pairs of clips in it, small and large. Like bobby pins, they are wavy on one side and straight on the other.

You use the by rolling the canvas and placing them (wavy side in) at either end. This creates a smaller item to hold and protects the canvas from the wear scrunching it can cause.

I tried the clips on two different canvases and compared it to stitching the same canvas without clips. By and large they did what they are supposed to do; made the canvas easier to hold while making the area to be stitched clearly visible.

One of the canvases I used is an older canvas so it is very soft. While the clips did keep the piece in a roll, it still flopped around. Although it was easier to stitch, the flopping meant that the clip on the end away from where I was stitching popped out, repeatedly. Admittedly this canvas is in very bad shape, but this is something to note because not all canvases will have a good tight fit.

The second canvases was newer. There were no problems here with the clips coming off; they worked beautifully. However newer canvas still has lots of sizing in it. It still kept the roll after I removed the clips, so even my stitching without them went well.

This is a great and useful tool for those who like to stitch their needlepoint in hand.

View original post here:
Canvas Clips – Product Review

White in Metallics

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

Lee Needle Arts needlepoint kimono using City Needlework Silk stitched by needlepoint expert Janet M. Perry

It used to be that if you wanted white in Kreinik metallics you used 032. That color, while white, has lots of translucent threads in it, so it tends to be rather sparkly and has flecks of other colors.

A better, more clear white is 100 or, even better, 100HL. 100 is more sparkly than 100HL which has served me well as a flat white until now.

Earlier this year Kreinik introduced 5760. It is even whiter than 100. It still has some metallic flash, but is a very pure white.

In the kimono pictured here 5760 is used for all the white except for half the stitches in the flower center. The remaining stitches there use 032. The difference is subtle, but there. 5760 is a very bright white with a solid look. It attracts attention. 032 is more subtle and more translucent, probably because it picks up some of the surrounding color.

Nimble Needle in a recent post shows you 032 and 5760 side-by-side so you can see the difference in whites.

If you have been looking for the perfect thread for snow, here it is.

Link:
White in Metallics

Skein Holder – Pimp my Needlepoint

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint,tools

I’m always on the lookout for easy projects to make that can make my stitching life easier and more beautiful.

This charming holder for skeins of wool (or any other fluffy thread for that matter) is charming and easy to make. Kathy of The Unbroken Thread has made it for herself while she takes courses at The Royal School of Needlework this summer.

It uses felt, cotton tape (twill tape), ribbon, and some hand sewing. You could make it in an afternoon in colors of your choice. You could even give it embellishment by coloring, dying, stamping, or embroidering the felt.

Get the details on how to make it in this tutorial.

Thanks to Denise at Craft Gossip for pointing this out.

Originally posted here:
Skein Holder – Pimp my Needlepoint

A Good Stitch to Know

by NutsAboutNeedlepoint

in Nuts About Needlepoint

Criss-cross Hungarian is one of my favorite stitches, but it has some flaws. Between the stitches there are open intersections. Yes, you can leave them bare, yes, you can cover the with cross stitches, yes, you can add beads.

But sometimes none of these is quite right.

So I developed a stitch I call Inside-out Criss-cross Hungarian. It has units of three stitches that cross each other, creating the non-directional texture of the stitch. But the units are long-short-long instead of the short-long-short of Criss-cross Hungarian.

inside-out criss-cross hungarian stitch for needlepoint

It’s diagrammed above.

Something magical happens when you do this. Instead of open intersections, you have open holes. And, if the thread is thick enough, as is the case with the knitting yarn I used here, it covers completely. Here it even covered the white of the bare canvas at the edge.

It’s a good stitch to know.

Here is the original post:
A Good Stitch to Know

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