My Best Renovations
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After our son went off to college, Keith & I began flipping houses. It was the heyday of what we now know was the housing bubble. We would buy a house in a *good* town, a house 5-10 years old that had been neglected or even somewhat abused.
Keith & I did much of this work ourselves.
We learned what buyers want, attractive outside paint and landscape but not overwheling. No one wants to spend all their free time maintaining a landscape. They mostly want color on the walls, not the fabled neutrals real estate agents burble on about. Not crazy color either (my sister in law likes to paint wall size american flags and kitchen cabinets each in a different primary color accented by black & white check, I kid you not). They want warm color or subtle colors. A formal dining room with deep rich raspberry eggshell paint finish walls and glossy white oil paint trim was a huge success.
I don’t have a picture of the dining room but I also used that paint combo in the powder room
Now, the powder room was a depressing shabby nothing. For less than $1,000 (including the sink but not the toilet, which was ok when it was cleaned) we completely re-did it to great effect.
They want up to date appliances, they want clean carpet and nicer light fixtures, they want granite counters in the kitchen. Don’t care much about granite in the bathroom but in the kitchen it is a must. Closets too, every penny spent to luxury customize a closet is paid back, and more.
I would have to say, however, that it was the mostly the feeling you got when you walked in. The furniture, uncluttered minmialist decor and art on the walls helped clinch it. The buyers would often write their offer on the Granite counters. I learned so much about color that way.
This is one of our most successful renovations
This house was a shabby sad mess when we bought it. The fan in the furnace did not work, it was so clogged with pet hair from their 2 dogs and 3 cats. All the woodwork had dog claw scratches. The top of the smooth surface stove was crusted over. The owner told me she did not know how to clean it. The house had no landscaping, a dirt path front walk and was painted a peeling, depressing dull gray.
This is the back door, I loved this entrance, it was the one everyone used.
To make your profit tax free you have to live in each house for 2 years. This got us through our son’s 4 years of college, 2 year associates degree at Culinary Institute of America and his first major job.
We did very well with this house. Sadly, the next one we did was the last, the party was over. We got killed selling it and we had to sell. Keith had accepted a job in Savannah, we lived outside Boston.
Keith and I also consider him one of my best renovations. I did very well there. I renovated him and he rescued me. Tit For Tat.
So why am I blabbing about this, I am not completely sure. I think it has something to do with color.
The other crucial place for color, for me, is art. It absolutely does not have to matchy match but the pieces have to at least nod to each other. There needs be some kind of contact and flow, even if it is barely apparent plus the art has to look like it is in the right house. Interconnected with the furniture and colors.
This is not to say that I am some hot shot decorator, I’m not. I do seem to be able to create pleasing, easy to live in homes. Again, I think color does it. (and comfortable chairs and couches not covered with anything fussy, scratchy or slippery. Ever try to sit on a satin chair?)
Color is the first impression a home makes. Before you see anything else you see and feel the color.
I think color is equally important in how we dress. Of course, all us ultra-chic ladies wear black, my dear (fantasy world alert) but in clothing too, color is as important as silhouette is, color is what makes or breaks it.
Color theory began in the 18th century, somewhat fueled by a controversy over Issac Newton’s Theory of Color ( I did not know that before this)
I found these neat color wheels on line. They illustrate some basic color rules
These are the 3 PRIMARY colors. Every other color is made from these 3. That always amazes me.
Next is SECONDARY color which is defined as a color made by mixing 2 primary colors.
The difference here is what is called ADDITIVE COLOR and SUBTRACTIVE COLOR. This sounds daunting, but it is not.
Additive Color is the behavior of light mixtures in color, as in white paint to lighten a color. Colors such a grays, brown and ochres can’t be considered Additive, they do not bring light in. (Grays and browns are a whole other subject, I think of them as the muting colors)
Subtractive Color is a darkening pigment mixture. The obvious example is black paint mixed in to darken. The real point here is supposed to be the different ways the eye perceives light.
Next up are complimentary colors. They are the colors directly opposite each other on the color wheel. The example shown on this color wheel is the blue/yellow. There is also purple/green, orange/navy, red/teal etc. I did not think of many of these colors as complimentary colors but according to Color Theory they are.
This is analogous Color. This one I get right off. Colors in sequence. A given.
The last is monochromatic. This one too, I get. I often use Monochromatic colors in both my Needlepoint and my Bargello designs.
OK, now I think I am at my point (if anyone is still with me). I suspect that I am something of a color coward. Despite all my assertions of liberating color, I think I tend to stay in the same neighborhoods. Look at a collage of my pillows and allow me some slack for having to stitch many of them in colors that work with other stuff in my house
See my tendencies, the colors I always seem to circle around to? The only really different colors are the Sunflower pillow and I gave that one as a gift,
Same thing in my Bargello samples
There are clearly colors I return to again and again. The blue one is the only one that seriously breaks out of my rut. That was was deliberate, almost forced. I make myself do some blue stitching.
I do not have the excuse here of these colors having to “work” with my decor. It is less clear which colors and color families I neglect. I must not even be aware of my neglected colors.
My questions for myself are:
Do I not use certain colors because I think they won’t sell?
Because people don’t like them?
Because people aren’t drawn to these colors and dazzled by them?
or
Is it that I do I not use them because I do not like them?
This is the one that hit me hard up the side of my head. These are small, silly samples I have stitched to illustrate some of the details in the needlepoint canvases and kits I sell on NewNeedlepoint.com (I finally got a link in, Zac the Tech will be so pleased) They are all so much alike, in terms of colors used. I could have used any colors for these, there is not even the issue of making them attractive for my customers, these are just samples and not for sale
Here the Taupe cat is the only one not in line with all the other colors. I suppose I could not force myself to do a raspberry cat.
In conclusion, for all my big talk about Needlepoint Designers using the same old safe colors, over and over again. For all my boasting about my Color Sense and Color Picking Ability, I am just as guilty of being stuck in a color rut as anyone I complain about.
This is something for me to think about, indeed.
BTW, I began today’s post because I wanted to talk about the renovations I am doing to NewNeedlepoint.com. I have strayed a long way off my designated path today. I hope you don’t mind.
American Bargello
I have had this Bargello Design in mind for a long time now.
I started with this picture, from the service I buy many of my pictures from: ClipArt, I then adapt them or use them more or less as is for my designs (usually less).
The first version of this was this needlepoint canvas. It was bad. Poor design and execution. This one never saw the light of day (a place on my web site).
We did another one
This is is somewhat better. The addition of the highlighting on the flag stripes added some depth to it but……I was still not happy. This one made a brief appearance on NewNeedlepoint.com as a Kit.
The American Heart Needlepoint Kit did not make the cut. it was taken off my web site during this renovation/re-direction of it.
But what I really wanted, what I had in my mind all along was this
This is just the sample of the design. As a Bargello Needlepoint Kit it will be the correct proportions and stripe number for a real American Flag. The blue area will be a square (or is it a slight rectangle, I am not sure yet) done in deep blue. There are absolute porportions and numbers to making an American Flag, be it cloth, Bargello or drawn/painted.
In looking at this posted here, I think I will add a few more rows, to the left facing it, of the blue. As is, it does not show to it’s potential, even as a sample. I will stitch these before I post it on NewNeedlepoint.com.
I thought it was important to keep to the traditional proportions. This kit will not be a Custom Color Bargello. I think it is important that it be done in the right and classic colors. The only choices for someone who orders this Bargello Needlepoint Kit are: mesh size, Paternayan Wool or DMC Pearle Cotton and whether the design is done on white Zweigart mono canvas or light blue Zweigart canvas, available in 14 or 18 mesh.
If the light blue canvas is chosen, the piece does not necessarily need a stitched background. You could do a partial background or just a border. A simple box border in a Zag-Zag stitch would be terrific, done in red, white and blue or just red and blue.
The only part of this flag that can’t be authentic is the number of stars. There is no way to fit 50 stars there. The other question I have is, do you stitch the stars above a solid blue basketweave stitch or laid out among the blue stitching. I am not absolutely sure which to specify. I suppose it will come to me when and if this Kit is ordered.
This ripple bargello was the inspiration for this design.
This original idea belongs to Keith. He is the one who first saw the possibility when I first showed him the Ripple Bargello sample. Of course, the black to red to pink to white design leads one that way. The green Ripple Bargello is not quite as evocative of a flag.
I had been waiting for Keith to do the sample canvas for the American Flag bargello for so long, I finally did it myself.
My counting was not exact. I am not as good and my eyes are not as good as Keith’s. The sample was done on 18 mesh, which is small and harder to count. I was off by two threads (or 8 stitches) to match the small blue area representing the stars background to the size of the stripes, which are 5 threads (or holes) each in height. I had to *fudge* it in after the stripes were done.
This Bargello Design is an Original, I have not seen anything like it anywhere else.
It is a funny coincidence, I have removed the Ripples Bargello from my NewNeedlepoint.com Bargello category. I came to think it was too simple, not interesting enough to carry an entire Bargello Needlepoint. I might be wrong. Anyone with an opinion, I would like to hear it.
But the pattern is more then strong enough for this design. I bet, in time, I will find other ways to use it , as well.
So, that is the genesis, how I came to it, of what I hope will be a wonderful and popular Original Bargello Needlepoint Design and Kit (I really hope). Funny how it all rolls.
A RANT IS NEXT: FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS PART. I WILL NOT BE OFFENDED.
If you will forgive for doing so, I want a address a glaring injustice that I am currently dealing with. This is real life, not the wonderful world of Needlepoint. There are no pictures to illustrate this.
I had a very small car loan with Huntington Bank. I had not done business with them before, this was through a car dealer last year.
I adjusted my car insurance limits, which were very very high to just very high. My car insurance carrier, Chubb Insurance, for some reason unknown to me, sends out an automatically generated insurance cancellation notice to the lien holders (Huntington Bank) when insurance limits are lowered.
Then they immediately send out an automatically generated re-instatement of Insurance.
I began to get letters from Huntington bank saying that if I did not insure the car, they would force me to buy thier own insurance for it.
I responded immediately. I called them and explained what happened. I sent them copies of all and every document I had showing I indeed had current insurance.
Chubb Insurance sent them a document confirming my current insurance.
My agent, Aon Risk Management, sent them a document confirming my current insurance.
Huntington Bank denies receiving any of these documents.. Funny, they managed to see the insurance cancellation but not anything else, ever.
They began charging me $160 something a month for car insurance skewed only to cover their loan.
My Agent called them to confirm I had insurance. The Huntington Bank Representative told my agent there was no such claim against me, I was not paying them for insurance.
hmmmmm
So, I refinanced the loan at a lower rate. I thought I was all done.
Now Huntington Bank is dunning me for almost $600. for their unpaid insurance. I guess the law would not allow them to lard this amount on the the loan payoff, so they are dunning me.
Last night a representative threatened me with them ruining my credit, if I do not pay.
I don’t know how many levels this is sleezy on. I know it is unfair and I know it is predatory. Here’s the kicker. I have no recourse. There is no board or overseeing commission I can apply to for relief. They have me and I will be forced to pay this or they will ruin the good credit I have spent a life time building.
Since the economy has descended into recession and deep trouble this kind of thing is becoming more common. It is like the vultures are out there circling all of us, waiting for any chink, any vulnerable spot so they can sweep in and peck at us (lovely analogy, isn’t it?) This is how I feel.
My parents are 85 & 80 years old, they live in Boca Raton, Florida. Boca is a wonderful place to live. My parents have friends and neighbors who have been badly hurt or completely wiped out by the Bernie Medoff situation.
A few have been badly hurt, very badly hurt in terms of their financial security for the rest of their lives. A few have been totally wiped out. There is a house on their street which just sold for a fraction of it’s value. It was all the owners had left, after Medoff stole all their money.
To me, this is awful. These are old people who worked hard all their lives to retire and have a nice life. But it is not just Mr Medoff, this is happening everywhere.
I don’t know about you, but I am scared. I am mad and I am scared.
No wonder I love Needlepoint. The only disasters there are bad colors, poor design or messed up stitches.
Thanks for reading my rant. I feel (a bit) better for having said it. If you do any business with Huntington Bank, run for your life!
Color Combination Catalog
I know I have plastered pictures of my stitched Bargello patterns, my stitched Florentine Embroidery patterns and the pillows and pictures I have stitched all over this blog.
They are the best way I know to illustrate what I am talking about when I talk needlepoint and color. Zac, my web site tech, helped me make this blog when I asked for a blank page or 2 (or 10) on my web site to post these pictures and talk about them. I can never describe in words what a picture will show (and I am pretty good with words).
Zac wants me to talk needlepoint here, to instruct, but that is not me. He has since made his peace with my blog, he says it is ME. I think he is right.
However (bad word to start a sentence or paragraph with), in all these postings there are a couple of not seen before pillows of mine.
This peony pillow is done in DMC #3 Pearle cotton instead of the #5 I mostly use. This canvas was a 12 mesh and even doubled the #5 size floss looked skimpy. I have a bit of #3 bit not nearly enough to sell it on NewNeedlepoint.com I don’t have the money or storage space to carry a whole line of DMC #3 Pearle Cotton the way I do the #5 and the Paternayan 100% Persian needlepoint Wool.
It is the skimpy coverage of DMC #5 on 12 mesh Zweigart mono canvas that has me suggesting that my 12 and 14 mesh canvases need to be stitched with Paternayan Wool.
The DMC #3 has the same subtle sheen as the #5. This was the first canvas I ever stitched with this floss, in size 3 or 5, I used to patronize a store called Needlepoint Heaven in Boca Raton, where we used to live.
It was run by a late (late) middle aged married couple. She was the one who got me to try the “sparkle” floss I used on the “sparkle” roses canvas (yes, I know, there are more then a few roses needlepoints here. I went through a *roses* period).
She also talked me into trying DMC Pearle 100% Cotton Floss. She promised me it was easy to stitch, maybe easier then wool, and I would love the results. She was absolutely right, I now do the bulk of the needlepoint I do for myself and many, many of the kits I assemble with DMC Pearle Cotton Floss.
It is every bit as wonderful as she promised me and then some.
The couple who owned Needlepoint Heaven decided to retire. They tried to sell the store, complete. They asked an enormous and ridiculous price (If I remember correctly it was several hundreds of thousands of dollars, the stock in no way justified that price).
I thought about buying it until I heard their price, I am glad now I did not. I would find sitting in a store all day, 5 or 6 days a week to be like being in jail. it would drive me crazy and anytime a customer came in the door, I am sure I would jump them, swarm them and drive them right back out the door.
I was talking about the peony pillow wasn’t I?
The other one I haven’t shown yet (except in my Color Combination Catalog, I will get to that in a minute) is this one.
I first saw this canvas on the Elaine Magnin Needlepoint Web Store site (Oh No, am I promoting another store on my store blog?) I used to buy quite a bit from them but I never let them pick threads for me. The one time I did, I disliked the colors they chose to duplicate the colors in the design with, which are never ever a perfect match, and they shorted me some needed yards. They did send me the extra wool but…..
This was a special order needlepoint canvas, all (most) of the best ones are, in that web store. I waited, I think it was, 3 months to get the canvas. I called them several times asking about it.
When it came I tore open the tube and began stitching it immediately. I had to decide whether to do the edges of the ribbon in gold color or gold metallic, I chose gold color, I now wish I had chosen the metallic, oh well…..
This is a 14 mesh, stitched with Silk and Ivory 50% silk and 50% wool needlepoint yarn. When I began doing needlepoint again, after the many years I was so sick, Silk and Ivory was all I used.
I was not all together pleased with the Silk and Ivory yarn. It was expensive and I found that pillows I stitched with it, if they were actually used as pillows and touched, did not “wear” well. They got fuzzy surfaces and pilled some.
So, that is why I was so thrilled to discover and fall in love with DMC Pearle 100% Cotton Floss.
The downside to my needlepoint passions is that I often tend to focus in on one thing, to be blind to other choices in threads, patterns etc (as shown in the series of rose pillows I did). So I stitched with just the Pearle Cotton for a long time. I used the DMC and the Anchor. The Anchor colors were wonderful, a little richer and more subtle than the DMC colors, sadly Anchor has stopped making #5 cotton floss.
When I began to plan NewNeedlepoint.com (I will skip the link this time) I knew I had to offer more then just cotton. I knew that everyone always sang the praises of Paternayan Wools. The few times I had stitched with it I found the yarn lovely, different from the Cotton or the Silk and Ivory but very nice.
I bought a basic spread of the Paternayan Wool colors, in fact the company who makes it, JCA Co., has a list of what they call “basic colors”. I bought those along with a few more shades and variations.
I began to stitch with the Paternayan 100% Persian Needlepoint Wool and fell in love. It comes in 3 strand hanks. It is remarkably easy to strand (I am still in shock after trying to separate strands in some of the silk threads). I really enjoy stitching with it, I love the range of great colors (of course, I have bought many more colors for my inventory since). It is different from cotton, not better, not worse, just different for a different look and effect.
Ok, I forget where I was going with all this.
I have made a new Blog Page that I plan to use as a Color Combination Catalog or Sampler.
It is the colors I have used, the combinations I have made and liked in the sample Bargellos and Florentines Embroideries for NewNeedlepoint.com (again, no link..Zac is going to lecture at me about this, I am sure) plus the pillows I have stitched in the last 8 years. The years since I took up needlepoint again.
Each sample or pillow has a number. Customers who wish to use one of my combinations to stitch a Bargello Needlepoint pattern, a Florentine Embroidery Pattern or own of my line drawing needlepoint designs on white canvases, can ask for the combination or specify a variation of that combo by number. That has to be better then someone asking for the colors I used in “that” one or “this” one.
Of course, they are shown one by one and numbered on that page.
This is in addition to the completely open and undirected (by me) option of picking their own colors for my canvases. I will assemble those colors in the correct amounts (on the generous side, always, I hate running short) or they can use their own stash.
As I blabbed about in the last blog posting, I am reconfiguring NewNeedlepoint.com (there you go, Zac).
This process is happening now. I hope to have it done by the end of this next week. Right now all you will see is that I have removed from sale all of the designs and canvases we did early on. The ones we now judge to be amateurish or not wonderful.
I plan/hope/want to link my new Color Combination Catalog to each page I list one of my canvases without the threads.
I sure hope this all works. NewNeedlepoint.com is, and probably will always be, a work in progress. I bet I change it a zillion times. I hope you like these next changes.
It is the next day, I have a good (I hope) blog topic for tonight but I could not wait to add this. Zac, my excellent tech, gave me a html code today to use to open my Color Combination Catalog Page. It looks like a line in the listing but in color, like a link.
When you hit the link, it opens my catalog page on a new web page. This way you can look at my listing at the same time you are looking at the samples of colors. This is the The Cat’s Meow! (i couldn’t help myself, forgive me)
Things Change
I am a movie fan and as such, I relate many things to the movies I have seen and remembered. I must admit, I do not remember them all.
A number of years ago there was a funny movie called “Things Change”. it starred Don Ameche (he was quite old then) and Joe Mantegna, he was relatively new to movies then. I am pretty sure this was before Godfather 3.
The plot of the movie is not the point here, the title is. It has stayed with me for years, Things Change, they must I suppose. As they say, a shark must always move forward and eat or it dies (is this true?).
Anyway, I am about to change, to refocus, my web store, NewNeedlepoint.com
I am going to edit it way down, remove all of the dicey or amateurish looking canvases, the ones we did early on, before we really learned how to do it (and we are still learning, me as designer, Keith as artist/tracer).
I am going to eliminate the *Color-Choice* category. That is where you can buy a black & white line drawn needlepoint design from me, you tell me the colors you want it to be done in, I pick those colors in the proper amounts for the canvas, and assemble it as a Color-Choice kit.
I am eliminating the category and at the same time, essentially making all/some/many of my canvases Color-Choice, in a different way.
I will now sell my own design needlepoint canvases as kits, assembled with threads and colors I choose (using my excellent color sense, of course).
Or as a black & white line drawn canvas alone.
for some/many of my own line drawn designs, the customer will then be able to choose another option, me assemble a kit for them, using their choice of colors in either DMC #5 Pearle Cotton or Paternayan Needlepoint Wool. (not yet sure how many of them I will make available for this option)
or buying the canvas alone, to use with their own colors.
I still believe in the idea of freeing needlepoint from the tastes (seemingly frozen in time) of many of the major and well-known needlepoint designers and their limiting printed or painted needlepoint canvas.
There is no need to cover colors to change them, when the original color has not already been selected, for us.
I am keeping the bargello categories as they are, and expanding them as fast as I can stitch the samples.
I am also adding a page to this blog which will function as a place to pick one of my already designed color combinations, by number, to use for a bargello or as the base for a needlepoint color palette.
The page will be accessible from each item listing (I plan it so, anyway..if possible). it will make ordering the *twin peaks Bargello* much simplier. Easier to ask for color combo #5 rather than “oh..that pinky one” (of which there are several).
What brought this on? Not sure. Maybe it is just the logical progression from where I started this.
This is all new to me, a brand new venture in uncharted waters. I don’t think anybody, or hardly anybody, else is doing line drawn designs on white (or colored) mono canvas. I think everybody else is specifying which color where, by printing or painting the colors on the canvas.
I don’t know if this change will help. I do know I want to weed out some of the weaker design canvases.
I am staying fully committed to selling the Patt and Lee Design canvas kits, the Claire Sanchez bags and tote bags, a few handpainted needlepoint canvases, either from my private stash or ones I find that I admire and my puny little accessories section.
I am also going to keep going with the Chinese Kanji and the Quotes needlepoint canvases. I am way into my wonderful collection of Mae West quotes. I have more to do and a few other completely odd and unexpected quotes and sayings to add.
Watch for the “if I’d Killed Him” canvas. I am currently at the *nag husband to trace the canvas, 3rd try” stage with that one.
I am borrowing a wonderful idea from the excellent Patt of Patt and Lee Designs and doing one of the quotes or maybe a Kanji with a bargello border. I think that will be terrific.
Why I am doing this, part two? Someone said something to me, used a term to describe my Color-Choice Needlepoint Kits. They called them *coloring book needlepoint stuff*
OUCH
So, Things Change. Then again, things change and then they change again, and again and maybe even again.
Who knows. I’ll leave you with a picture of my Lord & Master, Jack the Cat, I am his humble slave.
he loves to sun bathe.
Which Stitch?
The world is going crazy. My bank is suddenly the Terminator with killer fees and husband gets a letter from credit card company saying miss 2 payments and your rate becomes 31% (31%!!!!). This sent to a person who has never missed a pyament, are they hoping or what?
I am retreating into the lovely and colorful depths of needlepoint and bargello for today’s blog.
Forgive the blog hole, I have been sick (again) another cold, this one worse than the last…..but not piggy flu…yet.
I want to talk about the current needlepoint communities obsession with fancy stitches. It seems as if everybody is wild for them. They are being used for any and all stitching, almost indiscriminately.
This is a stitched sample of one of Patt of Patt & Lee Designs needlepoint canvases, done by Patt. Now, clearly Patt is a very talented stitcher but does this small piece really need all these amazing stitches?
Just to stay focused here, this needlepoint kit is available on NewNeedlepoint.com along with many other of Patt’s excellent designs.
Yes, the background is amazing, so is the coffee/cocoa. It does look like cocoa to me but does all this spectacular stitching add to the piece or take some of the focus off the great colors and design elements? I am not sure.
Now, this could be sour grapes on my part. I am not terrific at these stitches. I find having to fuss endlessly over them detracts from the pleasure I have just stitching. I get into a stitching rhythm and it just rolls effortlessly along as I watch the color grow and *bloom* as it builds and increases to become needlepoint art (forgive me that brief poetic lapse, I am better now).
Some of the background and filler stitches are just wonderful and some are just annoying. They all (mostly) look good when finished but is all that extra work and fuss worth it? That is the question I am asking here.
Some stitches are perfect for filling in and giving character to vast sweeps of stitch, stitch, stitch area in a design. Some are excellent for highlighting a feature or small area.
These are some close-ups of decorative stitches I taught myself.
I find it much easier to choose which stitch I want to use if I can see it all done up, not just lines in a book, so I made myself a practical sampler. I used 1/2 of the Maggie & Co needlepoint canvas called Joseph’s Coat.
This is a MOSAIC stitch in deep cranberry.
I like this stitch very much but I have not yet used it for more then a highlight stitch. And in Purple
Pink BYZANTINE. I use this often as a background stitch.
Here is is used as a wonderful background for my Tassels Pillow
And here is the whole pillow
But here is an interesting point. I could not use this stitch to do the fringed ends of the tassels. I had to revert to a regular stitch for that.
This simple and effective stitch is called the BARGELLO stitch. I use this one often as well.
I used this stitch for part of the background for the iris Pillow. I am not sure you can see that in this picture. What is interesting here is that I could not easily make the BARGELLO stitch work for the small areas between the stalks and leaves of the floers and reverted to tent stitch for that.
Another “filler” stitch I like very much is the FLORENCE stitch. I used it for a mixed stitch background on the small tassel pillow, the companion pillow to the other tassel pillow. Both pillows are the same size and I used the same basic colors in both but they look so different.
What is really fascinating here is that the DMC #5 Pearle cotton used for the background is exactly the same for the Florence Stitch areas and the basketweave stitch areas, it just looks slightly different. this is, of course, due to the stitch used.
and this is the finished pillow
There are other great stitches, ones that do not require an advanced degree or 100% concentration to stitch
This is classic DIAGONAL GOBELIN
Or the wonderful SCOTTISH stitch done in beige. This one only needs 1/2 to 3/4 attention to do.
Or the CHEVRON stitch, this is another favorite of mine.
I used this stitch for the center of the French Country Chicken I am working on right now
and the lovely yellow and gold PARISIAN stitch
But using these stitches you loose something too.
This is a close-up of a rose canvas I stitched using DMC #5 Pearle Cotton and a shimmer thread in white. I am not, by nature, a shimmer person but the lady who owned this needlepoint store I sometimes patronized loved shiny, shimmer, glitter threads. She convinced me to use it and it did come out beautifully
This is the whole pillow
But here is the point of my point (OK, so that doesn’t really make sense) Look at these colors.
and these
Or the whole pillow
This was done with a finite numbers of colors, the colors are all mixed up in various combinations. There are a few roses with the same color combinations used, just a few. Mostly they are unique. It is a lovely riot of color, done with a set number of colors and basketweave stitch. I think that this does not need fancy decorative stitches and indeed would not be improved by using them.
I think we needlepointers have lost touch, somewhat, with the simple beauty and rich elegance of the materials and colors we use in our mania to excel at these difficult and often gorgeous decorative stitches.
There is so much that can be achieved with so little, as in this pillow
This is the first needlepoint canvas I ever designed. I am going to be adding a variation (improvement) on this original design to NewNeedlepoint.com by request. Many women who see it ask if they can get one. Those are the ones who do not look at me oddly instead.
As a side note, my husband is still alive, we are together 20 years this summer. Sadly, he is my 3rd husband. He represents a triumph of hope (and love) over experience.
Pick Up Your Stitches
I wanted to name this post Hoist with My Own Petard but the actual meaning of that phrase is “Injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others”. That is clearly not what I have done. I have only messed myself up, by myself.
So, looking for a new pithy title. I found one. *Pick Up Your Stitches* “might mean “Do it right” or “Correct your mistakes” probably something to do with maintaining your karma. In knitting, if you fail to pass one needle properly through a loop of yarn in the row of loops you are transferring, one at a time, from the other needle, you have “dropped a stitch,” and this mistake shows as a hole in the sweater (potholder, afghan, scarf, cap). Picking up a stitch can mean doing it right the first time (not dropping the stitch) or repairing a dropped stitch later (by pulling the yarn to where it should go and anchoring it with thread).” quote from www.phrase.org.uk.bulletin_board/9/messages/34.html
Although it applies to knitting, the idea is spot on. I messed up the information given on my last blog post.
I realized that according to the specific description of Florentine Embroidery vs. Bargello Needlepoint I got it wrong. The last 2 pictures in that blog post are not an comparison of both.
They are both Florentine Embroidery as defined by stitches of differing lengths in one piece.
In addition, all through this blog and my web site listings I have called some Florentine Embroidery patterns Needlepoint Bargello.
So…I am going through my Bargello Needlepoint samples done so far and divide them by Bargello Needlepoint and Florentine Embroidery.
FLORENTINE EMBRIODERY
BARGELLO NEEDLEPOINT
I think I got them all.
This time I can’t blame this on my husband or the cat (the usual suspects) since I am over on the other coast of Florida staying with my folks for a few days. I will attribute this oversight to being dazzled by the beautiful and luxurious world of Boca Raton, Florida. I love it, plus it is sort of fun being my folk’s kid again. For a few days anyway AND I get to drive my dad’s Jag XKE everywhere I go. Town Center Mall here I come!
Deconstructing Florentine Embroidery
In 1977 Woody Allen made a movie called “Deconstructing Henry”. It was pretty much a typical Woody Allen movie of that time, not his best, not his worst. The movie is about a writer, whose books are very close to the surface of his life, they reveal much.
He is on his way to his old college, to be honored for his writing.
In the course of his road trip he takes apart his life, bit by bit and looks at it. That is deconstructing.
I want to try to do that for this bargello.
I found this pattern in an old hardcover copy of Margaret Boyles *BARGELLO, An Explosion in Color” published in 1974. I bought the book used from one of amazon.com’s “marketplace” sellers. They listed this book as “Like New”, that was maybe the first time that I realized that the used book market has different meanings for common words in the English language.
“Like New” means old and beat up but not falling apart yet. I accepted the book’s condition and jumped in. There is so much here. I have done a number of patterns from this book, so far but this one was a challenge.
It is, according to Margaret Boyles (and she should know) an advanced stitchers pattern. Now this is where it gets interesting.
She calls this pattern FLORENTINE EMBROIDERY as opposed to Bargello. She says that patterns that combine 2 stitch lengths, like this, are more correctly Florentine Embroidery, not Bargello. Interesting.
So far, all the Bargello patterns I have done, no matter their degree of complexity, the basic formula was the same. You stitch over a counted number of threads, then you *step up* (or down) a different number of threads. There you stitch over the original number of threads, then you step up again , then you….. You probably get my drift.
According to M.B., that is Bargello. But, in this advanced pattern I would stitch over 5 threads, then step 2, then stitch over 5, then step 2, then I would stitch over 3, step up 2 and stitch over 3 again. Followed by a 5, a 5, a 3, a 3, all with the 2 steps between them
I really should draw this on a graph and photograph it, but it is 4:36 am so I think I will let you use yoiur imagination instead.
This is a close up of the pattern:
What happens when you do this is you get a secondary pattern, different from the primary pattern of peaks and valleys. The secondary pattern is diagonal lines across each peak formed by the holes left after stitching the 5, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2 pattern. I guess the closest descrition I can think of (at 4:42am) is that it is like a Damask or Jacquard Brocade fabric, which often has a same color pattern “behind” the colorful pattern. (am I dating myself here or what?)
Anyway, look the the pattern again, in as much close up as I can get without buying a special lens.
I am not sure what to call it now. I am so used to tossing off “Bargello”. I find it odd to refer to this as “Florentine Embroidery”. Anyway, I had trouble with this pattern almost from the first. The colors just did not *jell* for me right away. I actually began with the Caribbean Blue, peach, off white and pale red. I had a brown in there, bad. unstitched that. Then I tried other blues, bad, bad.
I always make a special effort to use blues. I am not a “blue” person and I have to force myself to incorporate them into my designs. I tried some greens, worse bad, really foul. Then I hit on the muted purple. It worked, the colors worked with each other and with the design. I added an extra row of purple at the bottom, to cap the piece and stitched on.
I think my goal with the color combinations I so love to do is to a) dazzle b) they should look “right” c) they should look unique but not forced. It should look natural but not natural. Have I completely confused you? Welcome to my world.
I have not listed this Florentine Embroidery yet as a sample, so that my customers can order this design in their own color choices or in one of my color combinations. I need to do another of these, to be sure that I can correctly stitch the *establishing line* if and when someone buys this pattern and threads to stitch.
I have another dilemma. Do I do a whole other category for FLORENTINE EMBROIDERY or just incorporate it into the by canvas size listings for all the other Bargello I offer for sale on my web site (watch out, here it comes) www.newneedlepoint.com (that is what is called the money shot, where I sell my stuff)
I have to go back and read this, see it I made it clear. To finish I want to show you, next to each other, the difference between Bargello Needlepoint and Florentine Embroidery.
vs.
I think I will try to sleep now.
It is Tuesday 9:51P. I have retaken the pictures and replaced them. I hope these show what I am talking about clearly.
The Proof is in the Pudding
I have always liked that cliche’. I looked up it’s meaning and it is all about results. As in a great pudding is proof of a good cook.
That can work the other way as well, lumpy gravy is lumpy gravy. This blog post is on point and off somewhere in left field (which makes it a typical blog post for me).
First up. As you may know from my last few blog entries, I have been trying to do a 4-way bargello. This has proven quite an education. I have done and re done this 5 times, so far but I think I am done with it for now. In other words I give up. Needless to say, this is only a temporary retreat but….
Stitching (or attempting to stitch) these 4-ways is all the stitching I have done for weeks now.
This is the very first one I ever did. I re-did it 3 or 4 times but finally got it right, as far as it goes. I stopped there because I had no idea how to proceed in towards the center.
This was the next one I tried, or at least the next one I am willing to show to anyone.
The single strand of DMC #5 Pearle cotton thread was not enough to cover 14 mesh beige canvas.
This one was done in Paternayan 100% Persian Needlepoint Wool. The coverage is good but it looks messy, to me. The mitered corner is not good.
Then I began a series on black 14 mesh Zweigart canvas. The wool one was hard. I had to use all 3 strands of the Paternayan wool to cover well but stitching with 3 strands on this thin, soft canvas distorted both the canvas itself as well as the holes in the canvas.
As you can see, I have used the same basic colors for all of these. This was deliberate. I did not want one color combination to be better then another for these, I wanted to judge them on stitched merit only.
This was (is) the last one, for now anyway. This has been exhausting.
This was the beginning of it, in DMC #5 Pearle Cotton thread on the too soft black 14 mesh canvas.
And this is when I gave up. Obviously my initial counting was off. But I tried so hard, I did it over and over, stitched and restitched for weeks. Oh well…..
Ok, enough whining (for now anyway).
In my last blog post I was talking about my own, personal, needlepoint. I have had almost no time to work on any of it since I began to plan, build, stock and administer NewNeedlepoint.com
After posting the last blog I pulled out all of my unfinished projects. I pressed them out and looked at them in the hard light of day. Interesting.
The first one is a huge (24 X 20 inch) Susan Treglown optical graphic. It is 2nd in a series of these pillows I am doing for a beige leather couch. I am, as always, changing some of Susan’s colors. They are mostly too primary for me but I do admire her use of gold. The gold, black & white are the links in this series of pillows.
A close-up of the area I have already stitched. Usually it would take me 3-4 months to finish a piece of this size. I like to do several at once, when I get tired of one I switch to another.
I have been working on this one for 18 months now, I don’t think I have even touched it in 6 months.
This is the Agam adaptation I am doing for my Mother. She admires Agam’s work and has one of his optical prints. This is for the guest room she calls “the kids room”. It is the room where the grandkids all used to sleep when they visited, when they were little. The room has monkeys climbing a huge fake palm tree. I had barely started this one when I switched my attention to the creation of my web store.
Close-up of the Agam. I intend to do 3 or 4 colored lines in a fancy stitch, mixed in at random. The black will be regular stitch and the white squares are a Gobelin stitch variation in a square shape.
Now this is where it gets interesting. I think these next 2 needlepoint projects were what pushed me over the edge, into beginning NewNeedlepoint.com with my concept of Color-Choice Needlepoint and the whole idea of line drawings on white needlepoint canvas.
This is a French country rooster. I have a few really big ceramic roosters that sit on top of my kitchen cabinets under 12 foot ceilings. The space above the cabinets looked odd to me when I first saw this house, it was like a vast wasteland. It needed something, the questions was what.
We had an enormous antique (at least the dealer claimed it was antique) earthenware rooster we bought at the Brimfield, MA yearly antique fair (now, that is a trip, an amazing event. If you ran a booth selling those rolling grocery bag carriers there you would make a fortune, people lug around all the stuff they buy and there is much to buy there)
Anyway, I stuck it up on top of one of the cabinets and it looked great. We bought the 2nd one in Hyde Park, NY when we visited our son while he was a student at the Culinary Institute of America. (side note: the restaurants there, run by the students, are terrific).
The 3rd I bought on eBay. The 4th on a road trip to North Carolina. We lugged that one home, it took up a lot of the back seat. I sat it up with a seat belt on it. And that’s a rooster collection but I am off point (AGAIN).
This French rooster is for the attached family room. I mostly used the colors inside the center of the design but I wanted to change the border colors, it was too much gold and yellow for my taste.
As you can see, I have some serious see thorough using the white over the yellow. I could have hidden it better if I had doubled the DMC #5 Pearle cotton but that might have looked odd, since the bulk of the piece is done single strand. I do think the white & brown I used for the border are better then they yellow and blue the designer chose.
The close-up showing the see-through,
But this one is the “straw that broke the camel’s back” (I love a good cliche’). This antique style wreath canvas was a pretty piece as it was but I wanted it for a specific purpose. I wanted to stitch it as a simple wreath and have the saying *The Cheese Stands Alone* embroidered over the stitching in the center of the canvas. (I love that saying).
To do this I needed to change the design and wanted to change some colors. I first stitched it without covering the blue flowers that partly filled the center. The see through was bad so I pulled that out and used “wite-out” to cover the flowers. I was very careful with the “wite-out”, I had ruined some canvases in the past clogging the mesh by applying it too thick.
Next, I wanted to do the center with a beige/pale taupe instead of the white to give it a more antique look.
As you can see in my close-up there is still substantial see-through. I go back and forth whether if I should even finish this, if the blue shadow under the beige will be an issue when this is done and the saying embroidered on it.
If any experienced needlepointers see this, I would like your opinion. Will this be ok or not? I have quite a bit of work in on this but not the enormous job of filling the center with basketweave stitch so, this is the time to decide.
I did the center this way to highlight the embroidered saying, I thought a fancy filler stitch might be harder to embroider on.
It is funny, I had not thought of this for a while now. I have been so immersed in building and starting NewNeedlepoint.com that I lost sight of a big reason I began it.
It is and remains my intention to free needlepointers from the limits of pre-colored needlepoint designs, the trouble of color changing and the tyranny of needlepoint designers lacking a creative color sense.
And that pretty much says it all.
By the way, I am much better now, as you can tell from my much improved spelling and grammar. I find it odd that being sick also seem to make me stupid. Go figure.
wool vs. cotton
I have a cold. I feel icky, needless to say all the media’s *pandemic* talk has me freaked but since I rarely socialize with swine (at least none not in human form) I am going to proceed as if it is just a cold. (was that a double negative?)
Know one foolproof way to know I am not at the top of my game today? I am misspelling every other word I type. Amuse yourself seeing how many I miss correcting in today’s blog.
Scary times when a stuffy nose and scratchy throat set you wondering if your will is in order. Welcome to middle age, how the hell did I get here?
I have been doing , in my *spare* time, an interesting comparison needlepoint. I am working on two 4-way bargellos in a simple peak pattern. Both are done on black 14 mesh zweigart mono canvas, which by the way is difficult to work on. I am finding some of the colored canvases to be so thin and soft that they are difficult to stitch without a frame. I do dislike stitching with a frame. Oh well. More on my disappointments with colored canvas in a bit.
Ok, back to the subject. Both are done with the same basic colors, one with Paternayan wool
and one with DMC #5 Pearle Cotton thread.
The visual differences are clear to see. The wool one is softer, the design *fuzzier* on each stitch and warmer looking. The wool was very difficult to stitch on non-framed 14 mesh colored Zweigart mono canvas and the result is not that good looking, to me.
The cotton stitches up cleanly, the color changes are clear and the stitching looks clean and right. This was somewhat easier to stitch on the soft black canvas, but still hard to work evenly.
Getting closer, the wool is still fuzzy but the mitered corner looks ok, the softness of the wool masks any slight error or mistake in the miter.
Again, the DMC Pearle Cotton looks cleaner and while the miter may not be as perfect looking, it also looks more impressive for being so clearly shown.
Do you notice in the picture above how thin the individual threads of the 14 mesh mono canvas look? I have bought the Zweigart colored mono canvas in both 14 mesh and 18 mesh. Both are like this.
I am finding the some of the 14 mesh colors to be much thinner fabric than others. To be specific, the black, the red, the green and the blue are hard to stitch on, especially with the 3 strands of wool needed for good coverage. I know some people swear by a frame and while I have some frame and a big floor frame stand, I do dislike stitching on one. I do not like the rigidity of it and how cumbersome it is. I love to do needlepoint sitting in my big chair with my feet up on the hassock (after I have done my required cat petting, of course) and stitch while I watch movies.
A frame is awkward to use, for me, and prevents me putting my feet up (if what I am using is the standing frame) forcing me to sit upright over the frame. A lap frame is worse and a free standing frame causes you to have to hold it with one hand while you stitch one handedly with the other, not good.
Using a frame, for me anyway, takes the spontaneity out needlepoint, at least in terms of the needlepoint I do for pure pleasures as opposed to “work”.
Setting up a canvas on a frame to stitch the establishing line for one of the bargello designs I have for sale at NewNeedlepoint.com will seriously add to the time needed to do one.
I also found, when using the wool, that the 3 strands needed for coverage, somewhat pulled the mesh out of shape, making counted bargello stitches much more difficult.
For some unknown reason some of the colored canvas colors are thicker and more substantial weave. None of them approach the texture of regular Zweigart mono canvas but the beige, light brown and the ugly gold color are thicker and easier to stitch.
Colored Zweigart canvas was hard to get and more expensive. I have invested a certain amount of money in it and now am not sure how much I can or should use it.
I am just experimenting with using it now in my kit designs…we shall see.
I had no way to know that the colored Zweigart canvases would be so different from the canvases I am used to. I dislike having to make decisions like this, I make some of my worst choices making this kind of decision.
It is funny, I can make big decisions with much less angst than these tiny ones.
Keep an eye on NewNeedleoint.com to see how much I use these canvases and how long I keep trying to find a solution to these issues before I give it up.
Sometimes I think I am coming up with such creative innovations for needlepoint when all I am doing is making the mistakes others have already made, figuring out the things others already know. No wonder so few needlepoint designers design for colored canvas.
Can you tell I am not myself today?
I have revised this post 3 times since I published it this morning, this is a new high (low) in bad writing for me. (note, I made 7 typos in just this one line, I think I caught them all, this is pitiful)
