Recent Posts
Nuts about Needlepoint
Return To Blog Listing
Sneak peeks of new stitch guides from today’s best needlepoint designers Use this expanding resources of needlepoint ideas, techniques, and reference information. Material for your shop, website, store newsletter, and classes (with permission).
Recent Posts Tagged With 'beginners'
Glacier Bay Needlepoint Cruise – June 5-12, 2010
Craft Cruises and The Art Needlepoint Co. have teamed up to launch a series of Needlepoint Cruises, combining the fun of cruising with the opportunity to improve your needlepoint skills in a relaxed, stress-free environment without the interruptions ...
Give the Gift of Needlepoint
One of the nicest things you can do for someone is to share something you love, by teaching them. We love needlepoint, but all too often beginners are intimidated or the cost of classes (in time or money is too high). But still we want to share the...
Christmas Lights – 2010 Needlepoint Club
Christmas Lights is now open for subscriptions for this delightful twelve-month series of needlepoint ornaments. Based on old-fashioned Christmas Lights, each ornament has one mixed thread stitch for the bulb and a second stitch for the base. They a...
Great Source for Free Needlepoint Charts
One of my regular blog stops is my friend Denise Felton’s Needlework News blog at Craft Gossip. I always find such cool things on her site, and not just needlepoint. One of the things Denise does best is her round-ups of free charts. She does...
Blackwork, Bargello and Needlepoint ebooks by Janet Perry
Three wonderful eProjects are available for you to purchase today here and from the ebook store on All about Needlepoint. Maple Leaf Rag, pictured above, is a complete introduction to Bargello in sampler format. Beginning with a simple zig-zag, you ...
Beginner Needlepoint Project Book Out this Weekend!
One of the harder things I’ve done in needlepoint is advance from doing Tent Stitch to feeling confident in making different stitches, using different threads, and trying new color combinations. That’s why I’ve designed this new se...
Simple Trick for Stitching Needlepoint
When faced with a stitch such as Four-way Continental (diagram above), I don’t do well. Call me a dummy, but keeping on track with this stitch has been close to an impossibility in needlepoint for me. And the problem is that so many canvases h...
Black Cats & Needlepoint
Its no secret that I like black cats. I’ve owned three of them (that’s Dot in the picture above), and I have many black cat canvases stitched and unstitched. The nice thing about black cats and needlepoint is that since they are associate...
Make a Quick Bracelet from Stash Threads & Plastic Canvas
Looking for a fast project that’s suitable for kids, makes something cool and uses materials in your stash? Look no further than these wrist wraps, a free pattern from Coats & Clark. Using plastic canvas with stitching modeled on friendsh...
Hurray for Hearts – Needlepoint Stitch Sampler eBook Now Available!
Looking for a way to learn some new stitches and to use up threads from your stash? My new ebook, Heart Sampler, is now available here and in my ebook store. Throughout the article you will see three of the hearts I’ve stitched using this plan....
Vintage Needlepoint – Anne Orr’s Pomegranate Border
This week’s vintage design is another Anne Orr needlepoint pattern. Then central motif is a series of pomegranates. On one side of it is a border of Tent Stitches in three shades of the same color. Looking at the picture in my magazine, the pom...
Fall Needlepoint – Leaves Three Ways
Even if you live in a part of the world where the leaves don’t change much (like the SF Bay Area), fall always makes me think of brilliantly colored leaves. And since I can’t have them for real, I want to stitch them. To stitch your own l...
Marking Pens & Needlepoint – Naming Names
To learn the complete results of my testing of pens, get the current issue of Needlepoint Now at your local LNS. I tested three types of pens by marking them on canvas, wetting them, rubbing the wet canvas, blotting it and then repeating the whole pr...
Embroidery Traditions – Palestine
One of the things I love best about embroidery is that it is done in so many cultures and is so adaptable to many uses. Recently, I was looking through my books of charts and found Dover books of charted folk embroidery from Hungary, Baroque Germany,...
Hawaiian Quilts in Needlepoint
Hawaii has developed a distinctive quilt style, characterized by complex, symmetrical appliques, most often of native Hawaiian plants and flowers. I just love them because the designs are complex, but done in only a few colors. In other words perfec...
Introducing Happy Threads
There is a phenominal new resource availble on the Internet for people who like to stitch from charts. Happy Stitch is from Australia and the designs are all original, contemporary in style, and free. In the free needlepoint charts,there is “Ba...
Tell a Friend about Needlepoint
The weekly email from a local school says that you are the best recommendation for the school. That holds true for needlepoint as well, you are the best recommendation for needlepoint there is. By wearing needlepoint shoes, carrying a bag or wallet w...
Stitching the Rug — Planning Stitches
I thought when began working on the rug, that I would just grab some thread and start stitching away. Lord knows, I have the thread part locked up. So that’s what I started to do. Big mistake. I realized on Saturday that stitching the rug so ...
What’s your (Needlepoint) Poison?
“What’s your poison?” It’s an old-fashioned way to ask what you’re drinking. Last night, we took my youngest and her boyfriend out to dinner to celebrate her 21st birthday. To a restaurant that serves mixed drinks (relat...
Interview about Needlepoint
I’m so delighted that my friend Sister Diane interviewed me for one of my favorite blogs, Craftypod. We talk about needlepoint, why it’s such a great craft, and how we can change how needlepoint is perceived. Check it out! Social Bookmar...
Needlepoint Videos from Kreinik
Like many other needlepointers, I love Kreinik threads and use them often. I have several drawers in my thread stash devoted to them and often they inspire a piece of needlework. But now Kreinik has given us even more to teach and delight us. They h...
Needlepoint Ebooks Premiere!
That’s on the cover of Celebrate! The ebook version of the Come Stitch with Me needlepoint sampler from 2008. It has been expanded with additional ideas for using the stitches and information on how to develop a color scheme This cover is from...
Videogame Needlepoint
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 al...
Patchwork Blocks for Needlepoint & Cross Stitch - eBook Sneak
This charming needlepoint (it’s also a Twinchy) is one of about 50 in my first ebook, released July 1, 2009. This book is designed to be springboard for your creativity with many modelstitchers making their own interpretations of the blocks in...
Lee Needle Arts - Hand Painted Canvas Needlepoint & Accessories
The big news at TNNA is that Lee Needle Arts will be closing after, I think, 40 years in business. I wanted to alert you guys because this company is one of my favorites. not only for their lovely canvases, but also for their great leather accessorie...
Embroidery Floss Basics
Over at Needlework Tips & Techniques, there is a wonderful page of information about embroidery floss. It is designed for Cross Stitchers, but there’s lots of advice that works for needlepointers too. There is a video on how to separate pl...
My Basketweave Problem
I’m a lefty. If you think this shouldn’t make much difference in how you live your life, you are almost certainly right-handed and don’t live with lefties. It does. I’ve mostly conquered the stitching thing by working on frame...
What Was your First Needlepoint Project? - June Giveaway
This giveaway was inspired by one of the responses to last month’s post about how we learned to needlepoint. Priscilla wrote: My grandmother Mimi and my godmother Kappy gave me a needlepoint canvas with a grey donkey already stitched in the mid...
The Project that Never Was
I discovered Bargello shortly after learning to needlepoint. I saw Elsa Williams book and was hooked. But you know how they say “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach?” Well, my needlepoint ambitions were always bigger than my time or so...
Quick Guide to Needlepoint Slang
If you spend much time in the needlepoint world, just as in any other world, you will find stitcher’s have some special terms for things. This is a list, by no means complete, of some of those words. Stash - Your accumulation of stitchy stuff o...
