09 Saturday Jun 2012
Posted in elizabeth, Jean Hilton, needlepoint, Scott Lee
I am hoping to continue on Elizabeth this weekend with the ruff, but the class lesson for this part is only due out today. I will be keeping any eye on my mailbox! The first stitch is detached buttonhole which is well-represented on the internet (and has good instructions with the pattern), but I want to see the supplementary instructions first as they are useful.
07 Thursday Jun 2012
Posted in elizabeth, needlepoint
I finished off the left hand of Elizabeth without incident, and the ease of this part of the work lulled me into a false sense of security. The right hand caused me all kinds of trouble!
03 Sunday Jun 2012
Posted in basketweave, elizabeth, Jean Hilton, rhodes, Scott Lee
This week, I finished up the inner border of Scott Lee — that’s right, no more Rhodes stitches for awhile! I also got three of the four inner corners done. The last one will have to wait a bit, as the Elizabeth I, A Portrait class by Gay Ann Rogers got started on Friday.
I had gotten all prepared for class ahead of time – mounting the canvas and basting the center lines. So when I got home from work, I was able to get started right away on the first lesson, which focused on Elizabeth’s face. The basketweave stitching took quite awhile — right into Saturday, but I did get through it. Following this was several different colors, just a few stitches each, to work the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth. The eyes came out really nicely! It was a bit fussy and included stem stitch, which I have never done. But I was really pleased with how it all turned out. I hope to have a picture up soon.
I’ve left off in the middle of the left hand, which is more basketweave. I don’t mind basketweave too much in smaller areas — it becomes somewhat mindless once you have the shape you are doing down and the fiber figured out. I have found it a bit boring when doing whole pieces in it. Switching colors just isn’t enough to keep my interest. But on this project, doing some basketweave means a whole slew of interesting overstitching and new details are just around the corner!
28 Monday May 2012
Posted in Uncategorized
28 Monday May 2012
Posted in Jean Hilton, needlepoint, Scott Lee
Over the weekend I have spent more time on the inner border of ScottLee, as well as the inner frame (the blue 4-way continental with overlaid diamonds). I am working on the third corner of the inner frame and I have about 1/6th of the rhodes border remaining. Progress!
I also got Elizabeth set up and the prework mostly done for next week’s start of class. This involved taping up the congress cloth for the doodle canvas and the portrait and tacking them both to the stretcher bars. I also basted center lines onto the portrait canvas using a pale yellow floss. It was at this point I realized it has been a couple of years since I worked on congress cloth and, in that time, my eyes have probably gotten a little worse. I did the basting with full light but my eyes will still watering and achy by the end. Aging!
Luckily, my stand has an optional attachment specifically for holding a magnifying glass and light, so I will order that and use that to stitch Elizabeth and other things on smaller count grounds. I do not have any problem with 18-count mono (for now) so at least I won’t need an extra contraption for that.
26 Saturday May 2012
Posted in needlepoint, woodlawn
Or “Show,” perhaps I should call it a “Show” rather than an exhibit. This draws a nice parallel to big-league baseball, which is also called “The Show,” and having submitted a piece to Woodlawn this year, I do feel like I’m now in “The Show.” In any case, my mom and I headed to Woodlawn today to look at all the entries and to take a look at how my piece fit in. Continue reading »
05 Saturday May 2012
Posted in Jean Hilton, needlepoint, Scott Lee
Over the course of the week (and several baseball games – Nationals are 17 and 9, yeah!), I made a lot of progress on the borders around ScottLee.
29 Sunday Apr 2012
Posted in Jean Hilton, needlepoint, Scott Lee
I have several projects on bars right now, but only one I am actively working on. I’ll talk about the ones I am not stitching some other time (Maybe when I pick them up again).
ScottLee, by Jean Hilton, is my current favorite project. It’s inspired by an oriental rug — the density of patterns and variety of colors are definitely evocative of one.
28 Saturday Apr 2012
Posted in Jim Wurth, needlepoint, woodlawn
Today I satisfied my personal needleworking goal of 2012 — to submit a piece to Woodlawn. Had I planned better, I would have made my goal, “To Submit a Piece to Woodlawn Needlework Exhibition in a Planned and Organized Fashion.” But I didn’t — so it was a bit slapdash.
27 Friday Apr 2012
I used to be a knitter. I taught myself how in my early 30s and would sit in front of the television in the evenings, knitting away on this or that. But, eventually, I knit less and less. When I took up needlepoint, I gave up knitting altogether (I will say, however, that I think a wooden double-pointed needle of size 0 or 1 is the best laying tool known to man).
There were two main reasons I gave up knitting. Actually, there’s only one reason: I was terrible at it.
But there are two main reasons I was terrible at it.