Wherefore Art Thou, Stretcher Bars? Getting schooled by needle and thread
It’s only the people who do nothing that make no mistakes... is what I tell myself... daily...
Hot on the heels of my last post - where I rally cried myself toward needlepoint kit completion - I leapt determinedly forward in little mini-pockets of time that appeared and disappeared like firefly flickers.
Lots of stop and go. Lots of mid-stitch interruptions. (Kids. Puppy.) But there was quantifiable headway.
You can see my to-the-minute progress in the picture above. Last row, blog buddies! It WILL be completed this month.
BUT… do you see this?!
Lesson 1: An ounce of prevention…
THIS, my friends, is why you should use stretcher bars or hoops when you stitch. Warped like the fabric of space-time around celestial bodies.
The further I sew, the more bubbling and twisting disfigures my otherwise picture-pretty project.
I HAVE stretcher bars and hoops… somewhere. But in an astonishingly short-sighted move, I followed the “pshh, I won’t need that” path. We can all see where that led.
Frantic online research turned up something called “blocking” that uses steam and gentle stretching and tacking to ease a lopsided masterpiece into square. And apparently a little quilt batting tucked behind the framed piece can mask a bit of bubbling. Nobody, though, seems to have dealt with oceanic dips and swells in their canvas.
Probably because they all used stretcher bars.
I’ll keep you posted on how it goes here in hillsville.
Lesson 2: Respect your tools
Yes, that is (was) a needle. And yes, I broke the eye clean off.
Tools are critical to crafting, and deserve to be treated with respect - that means using them how and for which purposes they were intended.
So, it turns out needles are not intended to sharply yank stuck threads through tight weaves.
RIP, little needle. I now know better.
Lesson 3: Count twice, sew once
I enjoy a good YouTube or MasterClass binge when I’m crafting at night. But when you pair a distracted newbie with a precision-counting craft project, that’s a time-honored recipe for disaster.
Here’s me completely undoing a fancy stitch technique, because I’d miscounted… badly. I’ve had to unpick and restitch more times than I’d care to share.
Let me save you from the same fate. Repeat after me: “Count twice, sew once, count twice, sew once, count twice…”
Admittedly, none of the mistakes I’ve made are ruining the loveliness of the piece. And I’m still on target to have a frame-ready craft by the end of the month. Time to start planning what’s next!
What needlepoint mess-ups can you share to help your fellow enthusiasts avoid the same fate? Comment below!
