Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Sparkles: A Review and Tutorial All In One

Barbara Elmore's painted canvases are distributed by Sundance Designs, so she was able to get her hands on their new product Sparkles early. In this blog posting, she shows all the uses she's found for it so far. Amazing!
http://stitchpography.blogspot.com/2012/01/all-that-glitters-is-not-gold.html


Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

I Definitely Need a Bead Bar

Vicky takes us to a class with Meredith Willett (M's Canvashouse and Elizabeth Turner Designs) and shows off some killer scisssor fobs and some great detail on canvases her fellow students are working.
http://mostlyneedlepoint.com/01/29/spending-the-day-at-a-stitch-in-time-with-meredith/


Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

I Found Another Sylvia Sidney Fan

My all time favorite needlepoint book is Sylvia Sidney's, lovingly described here with wonderful photos of her stitching and photographs of her in various acting roles.  The writer didn't mention the pug needlepoints were studies for the pillow that she stitched for the Duchess of Windsor.
http://shewasabird.blogspot.com/2011/03/sylvia-sidneys-needlepoint-1968.html


You can see that pug pillow down at the bottom of the page, 4th photo from the bottom.  See the date and the initials SS?  That stands for Sylvia Sidney and the date the pillow was stitched, not the dog's birth and death dates. You can see a pencil drawing of this pillow in Sylvia's book but she was too discrete to show the actual pillow.  I always wondered what that pillow fetched at Sotheby's when the Duke and Duchesss' things were sold at auction and now I know.
http://www.interiordesignhound.com/2011/08/02/royal-hounds-the-duke-duchess-of-windsor-pack-of-dogs-a-pug-story/

Mary Martin's book on needlepoint is also good but I prefer Sylvia's.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/43756235/mary-martins-needlepoint-vintage

Needlepoint books in the early 1970s were often more personality than charts and diagrams.  Personality was what counted then, not how to do a complex stitch.  How I wish we had a few books like these today!  Not that I don't appreciate all the stitch dictionaries available to us but I miss glimpses of lives where needlepoint played a part.


Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com