When I first started designing needlepoint I wasn’t a needlepointer. I loved art and crafts and had tried my hand at lots of things, including cross stitch and knitting and embroidery, but needlepoint wasn’t yet one of them. When designing came on the horizon my mom, who worked in a stitching store in Vancouver, quickly taught me how to basket weave. Off I went, designing, painting and sometimes stitching, but I was much better at getting a design onto canvas with paint than turning it into a stitched canvas.
I still love basket weave. I think it makes the colours pop so beautifully and there’s a comfort in the evenness of the stitches, both making them and then seeing them made. To me, it’s such a rich look, but as I’ve gotten deeper into designing I’ve felt the pull of some of those other cool stitches out there. When I’m playing with something I’m grateful to the voice in the back of my head that says, “Sure you can put those two closely coloured things beside each other. They can be stitched with different textures and they’ll look sophisticated and fun!” It gives me freedom and I like the looks that stitchers get with it. I’ve also been very lucky at the chance to see those really talented stitch guide designers out there applying their magic to Pippin designs. (This one is a Laura Taylor special.)
In the last couple of years I’ve felt the pull of doing more stitching myself, made partly possible by my kids growing into giant adults and getting independent. Still loving my basket weave but all of those other stitches call. I’ve inherited my mom’s stitching books and between those and the internet I’m setting out. Doing this!
I do have a confession. I’m going to whisper it. I very very rarely work on my own designs. Let me say, no let me bellow, that I’m extremely happy that so many of you do indeed stitch Pippin canvases! I’m very happy about that. My problem is that when I’m working on something that I’ve designed myself I haven’t figured out how to turn off that inner critic voice so instead of having fun and relaxing I’m second guessing constantly. Did I get that colour quite right? Is the shape of that ear how it should be? I drive myself crazy! Somehow I think I should just know what stitches to use too, even though it’s new to me. Crazy stuff. So I gratefully see. others do their thing with our designs and I branch out on different projects. (Another Laura below. I was looking through photos and hadn’t seen these guys made up for a bit. She gave them such personality.)
One of the first stitching projects I did in the new time was a canvas I painted myself of a beautiful mosaic by an artist I love in England, Cleo Mussi. Look her up. She’s amazing! I would love to have one of her mosaics! I’ll make do with this for now (and probably always. Not sure how I’d even get one of her treasures across the sea). It seemed like a fun way to try out a few new things in little areas. In truth I stuck pretty much to basket weave. I’m pretty happy with those daisy things though. Seeing now that I still have a few bits to do, plus some background. Huh.
Another canvas that I painted for myself (I reused an old piece of canvas and you can see a teapot from the dozen teapots on the underside) was this lady who you might recognize from a coffee sleeve near you. Although maybe not lately.
So obviously this image isn’t mine, I just painted the one for myself to stitch and it won’t ever be in the line, but I do hope I can think up a design that has areas like this. They were perfect stripes to try out new things on. I also used a lot of different threads and started to figure out differences in textures, and have favorites. Especially with creams and off-whites. I have a lot of opinions on those, it turns out.
I smile looking at it because I loved working on it last summer and stitched it on planes and on trains. No automobiles though.
I’ve most recently been working on a Rittenhouse design that I’m enjoying. It travelled to Europe with me and back, just before things went weird. At the end of full days walking around London my big kids and I would settle in and watch a show together and I’d stitch and try to figure out what these dresses and suits should look like. I’m hoping to use those daisy stitches again on the white dress second from the left. And yes, I am a scrunchy stitcher. I don’t use bars. When I started it was mostly because I didn’t have bars, and whatever, but I have a few of my mom’s now and I think I’ll try a project on them. But honestly, scrunching up my stitching and sticking it in a bag by the couch is really me.
I’m very excited about the red part at the bottom. I don’t have a stitching store nearby and it can take quite long to get threads mailed across the border so I have a bit of a stash built up here, but not a ton of anything. I was worried I didn’t have enough of the rust colour to do the whole width and I was trying out a stitch that worked in stripes so I just did every other one so that if I have to go to another similar colour it will still work. It could look really cool I think. I’m sort of thinking about filling in the diamonds with a bunch of close-but-not-the-same colours too. In both designing and painting paintings my favourite thing is to mix reds and pinks and oranges together and I think I’m sidling up to trying it here. When I finish one area though I’m so nervous to start the next. It’s so fun but sort of scary too? In a good way. And there’s always picking out. Thank goodness.