Hello everyone

Hope your week has been good? Just to let you know that the shop will be closed for a week from today Friday 22nd – Friday 1st March. This is to enable me to focus on the new book which requires my undivided attention at present, hope you understand?

Till next time, have a wonderful weekend, and happy stitching.

Trish

Hello everyone

How is your week going? I know is has been freezing cold overseas, but in our part of the world we have been experiencing heat waves and constant power cuts, which is very disruptive to all things embroidery! As I don’t have much time to use the computer between power cuts this will of necessity be short, but very sweet:).

Cotton Muslin

The white cotton muslin is back in stock. You can find it here.

Printed Booklets

There are several new printed booklets available in the shop. When you click on a PDF pattern you have 3 options: PDF pattern, iron on transfer and printed booklet. The booklet is a new service provided for those of you who prefer their patterns in print, you asked and it was supplied. Not all the PDF patterns have this option but most of the more recent patterns do.

Till next time, wherever you are in the world, have a wonderful weekend and happy stitching.

Hello everyone

Hope your week is going well, weekend soon! A few items to chat about this week:

Iron On Transfers

The iron on transfers pack 7 & 8 are back in stock

As you know there is an iron on transfer for every digital pattern in the shop (except the free ones) and for the last 4 books. So if you download a digital PDF pattern and don’t want to transfer your own outline you can purchase an iron on transfer. They are really easy to use and can be used more than once – I have used mine up to 5 times successfully.

Packs 1 – 9 include multiple patterns in a pack. Once you have a pack in your stash you can download a PDF pattern whenever you like and iron on the transfer ready to stitch. When you click on a PDF pattern you will find a link to the transfer pack that you need for your convenience. We are in the process of adding a variant on each PDF pattern which will make it even easier for you.

Printed Booklets

As you know I discontinued all kits at the end of 2018 but as so many of you have requested the pattern in printed form, I have decided to provide the option of a printed pattern booklet for some of the PDF patterns, so you can purchase either a PDF or printed booklet according to your preference. Many of the PDF digital patterns now include this option as in the Provencal pattern below and there are more on the way.

Artwork

Based on the results of our embroidery pattern survey, I decided to have a go at creating my own artwork for future embroidery designs. For years I have requested permission from various artists or paid huge sums to license designs and recently I found that many of these artists have licensed their designs exclusively to Cross Stitch companies so I no longer have the option to license them. It has been many years since I picked up a paint brush so I was not sure if I could still paint, but nevertheless decided if I wanted to move forward I needed to give it a try. So I got hold of my daughter’s paint brushes and box of watercolor paints that she uses for school and proceeded to the drawing board. My first attempts were a bit clumsy and a few ended up in the dustbin, but it is starting to come back to me slowly…. I have now painted a few rough sketches with ideas for embroidery patterns. I hope to use them for needlepainting and of course shading is very much in mind while I am creating them. I am sharing some of these with you as would value your opinion: Do you think these will work well for embroidery patterns, am I on the right track with the naive landscape scenes so many of you requested?

Till next time, wherever you are in the world, keep smiling and happy stitching.

Trish

Hello everyone

Thank you so much for sending in your numbered preferences for new and future embroidery patterns, there was an overwhelming response!   More than 375 comments came in via the Blog and Facebook and each number choice was entered into an Excel sheet, so you can imagine it was quite a task!

Results

Firstly let me clarify that this survey was for Needle Painting and not Whitework. The results were quite surprising,  and although the traditional subjects remain steady favorites, I am delighted that some of you are branching out into new territory and thinking outside the box with your embroidery projects.    It has given me a very clear indication of what you would like to see in new and future embroidery patterns and I promise that all your preferences will be included.   There were 7 definite favorites.  Number 9 the Sunbird was the outright favorite by a long shot, followed by No 3 flower paintings.

These were closely followed by brightly coloured, naive styled landscapes – it seems that landscape patterns are hard to come by in the embroidery world,  so I will be looking more closely at these.

Next was No 9 & 11 and finally No 1.  The others had a few likes but not of any significance.  All your votes will be taken into consideration and I will do my best to provide more patterns along these lines.

Specific Requests.

To those who requested specific wild animals, birds, pets etc that were not listed on the options, more specifically from their country of origin, please understand that I have to cater for a wide audience from many different countries around the world and the subjects have to appeal to a majority.   I will certainly take your requests into consideration and perhaps include them in future Whitework designs, but meantime,  can I suggest that if you have a special project in mind for embroidery,  that you take what you have learnt and design your own?   I will be following up with a blog post on how to do this in the next few weeks.

Sizes

The results were more or less level,  some small and some medium and some of you requested large projects.  I have decided to work within the framework of hoop size (6″ (miniature & small) and 8″ (medium)  as a general guide. Certain images lend themselves better to smaller designs, such as landscapes where there is a lot of tedious background filling and others such as flowers work better in a medium size to enable us to have enough space to fill in small details.   I do understand that there are some seasoned embroiderers who like the challenge of a large project but the reasons I prefer working with smaller designs are this:

1. Small designs do not put strain on your neck and shoulder muscles whereas large designs do.  A large frame or hoop is difficult to manoeuvre comfortably whilst stitching and tends to be heavy in the hand.
2. Smaller designs can be finished in a shorter time frame whereas months or even years need to be devoted to a large design.
3. Smaller designs are more interesting to work on – there are no large areas of filling which personally I find boring!
4. Smaller designs have all the detail of a larger design but take up less wall space and provide more options for the final use.

For those of you who prefer larger designs why not get your photocopy store to enlarge the outline and adapt the design to fit?  Also you will be happy to know that the new book on Kew botanical paintings does include some larger designs.

Eyesight

No matter what the size all Needlepainting designs should be worked with a magnifying lamp or a good light source and your spectacles to see the details and avoid eyestrain.  You can find more details on this in my handbook.

This has been such a useful exercise and I want to give a big thank you to everyone who participated.  Till next time, wherever you are in the world, keep smiling and happy stitching.

Trish

 

 

Hello everyone

Thank you for the overwhelming response to the embroidery pattern survey.  I am busy counting the votes and the survey has now closed.  Will let you know the results very soon.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Trish

Hello Everyone

How are you today?  I need your help with choosing designs for new & future embroidery patterns.  Please could you take a minute to write a comment on this Blog post with your choices from the images below.   The images below are samples only and will not be exactly the same – it is just to get an idea of your preferences.  My question is this:

What designs would you like to see more of in new and future needle painting embroidery designs?  What size would you prefer, small or medium?

Your comment could read something like this:   I would like to see more of 1, 5, 8.  Small designs.

Thank you so much,  hope you have a wonderful week, keep smiling & happy stitching.

Trish

 

 

Hello again

There seems to be some confusion as to the items in the Art Shop.  They are not prints of my embroideries they are the original embroidery pieces, hand stitched by me, cleaned, blocked and mounted ready for you to frame/display.

To quote from my previous post: