Tag: term of the week

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!

This week’s Term of the Week is something that all stitchers have done at one point or another, and may still do it today – I’m physically unable to stitch in hand but that doesn’t mean someone else can’t!

So what does “stitching ‘in hand'” mean exactly? It’s actually extremely simple.

When you are working on a piece, if you stitch without anything but your fabric, needle, and thread – so no hoops, frames, stands, or q-snaps – then you are stitching in hand. It literally means to hold your fabric in your hand and stitch with nothing else attached.

Most of the time, stitchers only stitch in hand on small and/or irregularly shaped projects, the ones that are hard to use hoops on. But for some people it hurts or isn’t comfortable to hold a hoop or use a stand, so stitching in hand is the easiest way to get your stitching done.

For me, I find it extremely uncomfortable to stitch in hand for long periods of time. If I don’t use a hoop my left hand will cramp up and my left wrist will become irritated, making me unable to stitch. On anything other than small, 2 inch projects I have to use a hoop. Stitching in hand is physically not good for me.

What about you? Do you like stitching in hand or do you prefer a hoop or frame? Leave a comment below!

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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!

Welcome to this week’s Term of the Week, where we hop into a basic stitching term that’s good for everyone to know!

Evenweave (also even-weave or even weave) is a type of fabric where the warp (up and down) and the weft (left to right) threads of the fabric are equal distances apart, forming perfect squares. This fabric can be of many types, but for needlework, the two most common types are linen and aida. There is also a mixture of the two that is just called evenweave.

Most needlework fabrics are some type of evenweave, including the most popular Aida Cloth. All Aida is evenweave fabric, but not all evenweave fabrics are aida cloth. Some advanced stitchers prefer using plain evenweave or linen versus aida fabric.

What is the difference? Evenweave differs from aida in the count (or squares) of the fabric. Most evenweave fabrics are larger counts (28 or 32 ct. versus Aida’s 14 or 18 ct.) because the design of the fabric allows stitchers to skip a hole when doing the diagonal half stitch that forms part of the full cross-stitch. This is called stitching “over 2”.

This makes evenweave better for fractional stitches and also gives the stitcher more control over the size of the project. A 28 ct. evenweave project stitched “over 2” will be the same size as a 14 ct. aida project stitched “over 1”. So a stitcher using evenweave can make the project larger or smaller without making any changes to the chart.

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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!

In this week’s Term of the Week we dive into the different types of fabric available to stitchers!

Aida (also called aida cloth and java canvas) is a type of even-weave fabric designed specifically for needlework such as cross-stitch and embroidery. It is a stiff material that softens as you work, which is ideal for stitching in hand, but a hoop or a frame can be used also.

All aida cloth is even-weave fabric, but not all even-weave fabric is aida cloth. It’s the most popular fabric for cross-stitch and comes in a variety of colors. It’s the fabric packaged in most kits.

Aida is often called a beginner’s fabric due to the perfect squares formed by the even-weave as well as the fabric’s natural stiffness. It is not good for fractional stitches due to its stiffness. In order to make fractional stitches (such as quarter and three quarter stitches) the stitcher has to “punch through” the fabric’s middle square.

More advanced stitchers prefer to use pure even-weave and/or even-weave linen rather than aida, especially for larger projects and projects with lots of fractional stitches. Some stitchers, however, prefer to use aida for all their stitching. Just like many other things in cross-stitch, it’s all a matter of preference!

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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!

This week there will be an extra Term of the Week because the article I wrote to go up on Wednesday, was somehow erased and saved and could not be retrieved. Soooo an extra Term of the Week instead and I’ll rewrite the article for another week.

So, what is Confetti Stitching? No, it’s not a specific technique or a different kind of stitch!

First let’s look at the actual definition for confetti, courtesy of Dictionary.Reference.com:

Confetti

( used with a singular verb ) small bits of paper, usually colored, thrown or dropped from a height to enhance the gaiety of a festive event, as a parade, wedding, or New Year’s Eve party.

So that’s what confetti actually is, but what’s confetti stitching? Well, it’s a similar thing. Confetti Stitching is having a bunch of different colors in one area, usually a 10 by 10 square. It’s called confetti due to the stitches looking like the small bits of colored paper once you’ve finished the area.

Most stitchers hate confetti stitching because it’s difficult to keep your stitching neat when you have to carry your thread all over the place. Starting and stopping your thread can be difficult as well. However some people love it!  It’s the beauty of cross-stitch – we all have different tastes and preferences.

How much confetti stitching do you usually do in a project? Do you like it? Do you hate it? Leave a comment below!

I had never heard of this Term of the Week until a little while ago, and I had to share it with my readers!

This term actually goes by many names – needle minder, needle parker, or needle magnet are the three that I’ve heard the most associated with this term.

So what exactly is a Needle Minder?

A Needle Minder is pretty much exactly what you would think it would be: it is a powerful magnet that you place in your work area or on your project as a way to hold your needles. That way the needle can’t get lost by rolling off your work area or falling out of your fabric. It saves a lot of trouble of losing needles and having people find them later by stepping on them or sitting on them.

While you can stick a magnet near your work area and let that be that, most Needle Minders are decorated with a picture or design on top of the magnet. The pictures and designs to choose from are endless, and if you can’t find the one you’re looking for, it’s easy to find someone who can custom make one for you (or you can make it yourself)!

For some more examples of Needle Minders and the different designs available, check out 123Stitch.com.

While I don’t own a Needle Minder yet, it’s definitely the next thing I want to add to my cross-stitching stash!

This week’s Term of the Week is an interesting one. It’s a term a lot of stitchers might actively do without actually knowing the name for it!

As always, let’s first turn to our handy Dictionary.Reference.com for our technical definition before we dive into the stitchy definition:

Rotation

1. the act of rotating; rotary motion

2. a regular cycle of events in a set order or sequence

The stitcher’s definition combines a lot of the technical definition into one big definition rather than all those separate ones. A rotation involves a set number of WIPs or UFOs you are working on at a time, and you cycle, or rotate, through them at a set pace.

For example, I have three cat-themed WIPs that I’m working on. When I sit down to work on them, I work on them all, and rotate through them once I’ve worked on one for a certain amount of time or gotten a certain amount of stitches done. I call these cat-themed pieces my “Cat Rotation”. I originally had it on a schedule that I’d work on one piece for one week, another piece the next week, and then spend the next two weeks working on my big cat piece. It was my ‘Rotation Schedule.’

Some people use ‘rotation’ in a much broader sense. They may have 15 WIPs going at a time, and they use the term ‘rotation’ to refer to all of them, and they work on whatever piece they feel like working on at the time. “I’m working on my tiger piece right now! Hopefully I don’t have any more to add to the rotation or I’ll never get done!” Other people follow a much stricter definition, only working on a small number at a time, rotating every week or every other week or after 100 stitches.

However you view ‘rotation’, if you happen to have a bunch of pieces you’re working on, and you cycle between them, you might have a rotation and not even know it!

Our Term of the Week this week is a fun one, and one that can be useful to those who like making projects from bits and pieces!

The word “ort” means different things depending on the context it’s being used in. To stitchers, the word is an acronym (hence why I capitalized the letters), but before we dive into the stitchy definition let’s take a look at the common definition through Dictionary.Reference.com:

ORT

Usually, orts. a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

The stitcher’s definition matches up for the most part with the actual definition. “ORT” is an acronym meaning “Old Raggedy Threads.” What are old raggedy threads? They are the bits and pieces, the “scraps” if you will, of the threads that you cut away when you’re stitching. They are the leftover threads from kits or extra bits and bobs of fabric and thread you have lying around.

Really any leftover waste material that you can’t (or don’t want to) reuse is considered an ort. The stitcher’s definition is so close to the actual definition of the word (except referring to crafting instead of food) that some people don’t even think of it as an acronym.

This is the fun bit: stitchers most use the word “ort” when they are talking about their ORT jars. What are ORT jars? Jars to hold your ort, of course! People will fill their jars with their leftover bits of fabric and thread. Some people will use them as display items when they get full, others will empty the jars outside for the birds to use in their nests, and others will use the pile as stuffing for pin cushions or mini pillows.

It’s a fun and creative way to turn what would otherwise be trash into a beautiful display piece that helps the environment!

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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!