You need a special pair of embroidery scissors for every project. (That’s the excuse you use as you gradually get more and more adorable embroidery scissors.)
(I have an obsession with embroidery scissors. THEY’RE SO CUTE I LOVE THEM. <3)
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Have a crazy stitching habit of your own? Feel free to leave a comment and your habit may be in the next segment! 🙂
Today’s finish!
Once again, this was a piece that I completed and sent off as a gift before remembering to take a picture… I did purchase the kit again to do as a gift for someone else, so I definitely have the front cover to demonstrate! No worries about the information being missing like with the Grandma’s Love piece…
Name of Piece: Item #021-1389 Mothers Are Special
Designed by: Aha! This kit has a designer. The chart was designed by Kooler Design Studio.
Distributed as a kit by Janlynn Company under their Designs for the Needle series.
Kit Contains: 18-count aida fabric, embroidery floss, frame, self-adhesive mounting board, needle, chart, and instructions.
Finished Size: 2.5 inches round
Today’s finish!
Today’s Friday Finishes is a stuffed animal with a stitched bib I stitched for my nephew last Christmas!
Name of Piece: Lion Plush Toy
Designed by: The stuffed animal came with free charts, but they aren’t credited besides “free designs included”, so they may have been made for this kit.
Distributed as a kit by Michaels Store, Inc. The product was specifically made for them.
Kit Contains: Plush Pet, 18 ct. aida bib, free mini designs and stitching instructions.
Finished Size: Stitched Area: 2.5 in x 2 in. Plush Pet: 8.25 in. x 5.5 in.
The finished piece!
Today’s Friday Finishes is a cute one, and is personally one of my favorites! It’s also the last in our Mini Kits Series before we start over with new mini kits.
Name of Piece: Item #021-1389 Dreaming Kitty (Snoozing Kitty)
Designed by: These kits never say…
Distributed as a kit by Janlynn Company, under their Design for the Needle series.
Kit Contains: 18-count aida fabric, 6-strand embroidery floss, frame, self-adhesive mounting board, needle, graph, & instructions.
Finished Size: 2.5 inches round
My family often jokes that I’m a twenty year old girl with the body of an eighty year old woman. It sounds funny, but it’s mostly true. I have mysterious pains in both my left wrist and my lower back, and I have to take Glucosamine supplements about once a month in order to keep myself from feeling like I’m falling apart. I’ve been to the doctor and had blood work and x-rays, but no one is able to figure out how and why I have pain because everything comes back healthy and normal. The nurses have even said my levels are fantastic and just right for my age. So, until science can tell me what’s wrong, I just deal with my pain as it comes.
As anyone with health issues knows, working on your hobby can be a tiresome and painful experience when you have aches and pains to deal with. It’s a double-edged sword: you want to work on your hobby because it’s fun and relaxing, which is good for your health, but working on your hobby can aggravate your issues, which is bad for your health. Sometimes you’re just forced to put down the needle and thread and find something else to do, or stop doing anything entirely until you feel better.
It can be difficult to get into a good stitching groove. You’ve finally gotten comfortable and you’ve hit a good pace and speed, getting big squares of stitching done at a time. You haven’t even needed to frog once. And then… you feel the urge to go. Do you stop your groove to get up at the risk of losing your motivation and drive? Or do you keep trucking for as long as physically possible?
The big question many stitchers face in their lifetime: to pee, or not to pee?
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Have a crazy stitching habit of your own? Feel free to leave a comment and your habit may be in the next segment! 🙂
The state of your house is abysmal due to all the time you spend stitching. Dishes are piled up in the sink, the laundry baskets are overflowing, the carpets need vacuumed and the floors desperately need swept. The counters are cluttered and there’s barely any space to walk.
It’s time to reluctantly put away the stitching and clean up the house. Don’t be discouraged! Remember: once the house is clean, you can stitch again! Hopefully that’s enough motivation to get you through the things that take away your stitching time.
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Have a crazy stitching habit of your own? Feel free to leave a comment and your habit may be in the next segment! 🙂
You find yourself cursing the frog whenever you have to undo stitches. “Rip it, rip it!” Send that frog on to the next house, because he’s not welcome here!
(Confused? There’s a Term of the Week for that! Term of the Week: Frogging)
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Have a crazy stitching habit of your own? Feel free to leave a comment and your habit may be in the next segment! 🙂
This week’s Term of the Week is actually one I have never heard until recently! (Which is a little surprising considering all the research I’ve been doing into all the terms, plus it seems common sense.) I’ve also included another one in here because it would be too short to have its own article.
So, WISP is an acronym: what does it stand for? Well, the acronym WIP is a pretty common acronym known across many crafts and fields, meaning ‘Work in Progress’. WISP is just a variation of that: it means ‘Work In Slow Progress’. It’s pretty much WIP with an added word to it that describe a much slower WIP.
It’s when you’re working on a project, but it’s moving very slowly: whether it’s because you keep setting it down for long stretches of time or it’s an especially difficult chart or you’re just moving slow in general. The key difference between WISP and UFO is that the project is still being actively worked on.
For example, my Cat Rotation and my Native Wolf Dream Catcher are extremely slow-going, but I wouldn’t call them UFOs because I do regularly pull them out and work on them. I’d work on them more if I didn’t keep getting distracted by new projects (such as my pillow cases) or making gifts/working on Christmas presents. If I decided to put them aside completely to work on new things, THEN it becomes a UFO – otherwise, it’s considered a WISP.
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“Term of the Week” is a weekly blog post highlighting a new word or phrase commonly used among cross-stitchers but not found in an ordinary dictionary. These posts are to help explain the words’ meanings in context and provide a resource for anyone wondering what a term like “frogging” means. Check back every Thursday!
By the way – to keep up on Little Thread Crafts stitching news and get pictures, updates, and more that don’t appear on the blog until much later, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! I would greatly appreciate it!
For this week’s Term of the Week we head back into our stack of stitchy acronyms and pull out one that is arguably becoming a household name among stitchers.
HAED stands for Heaven And Earth Designs. Heaven and Earth Designs is an online company based out of Seaside, Oregon, USA. They work with local and international artists to turn works of art into cross-stitch pieces. They are known for several things: the size of their projects (HAEDs are known for being enormous, with charts often between 20 and 30 pages long), the types of charts they offer, and the cross-stitch they use to work the designs: all HAED projects are done in full crosses and full crosses only, no back-stitch, french knots, partial stitches, or blended threads.
HAEDs have exploded in popularity since the company’s creation in 2002. This is likely due to the number and style of the charts they offer; their website states,
“These are not your grandmother’s cross stitch designs, such as cute little bears and standard samplers. We offer you unadulterated cross stitch in its purest and most beautiful form.”
HAED charts can be expensive, and they only offer charts, not kits – you must supply everything you need for the project yourself. But the website runs sales frequently and if you get coupons and only buy during sales you can get a number of charts quite cheap. But be warned! Due to the massive size of most of these projects every chart you buy requires a large time investment. If you love large charts and you’re up for beautiful projects, then you may want to try an HAED!
I personally have never bought a chart from them, just because large projects aren’t my thing, but I have heard nothing but good things about them. Several stitchers consider it a “rite of passage” to stitch an HAED. For myself I’m going to stick to my “grandmother’s designs” because they’re smaller.
You can find the Heaven and Earth Designs website here: http://heavenandearthdesigns.com/
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“Term of the Week” is a weekly blog post highlighting a new word or phrase commonly used among cross-stitchers but not found in an ordinary dictionary. These posts are to help explain the words’ meanings in context and provide a resource for anyone wondering what a term like “frogging” means. Check back every Thursday!
By the way – to keep up on Little Thread Crafts stitching news and get pictures, updates, and more that don’t appear on the blog until much later, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! I would greatly appreciate it!
