Formerly Prick And Stitch Is My Craft
Beading needles tend to be much thinner than embroidery needles. The main requirement is that they go through the beads that you are using with room for the thread as well. I use small glass seed beads and bugle beads in my designs and I find that a size 10 English beading needle works well … Read more
When it comes to choosing a needle for paper embroidery it is really a matter of what works best for you. If you have a range of needles in your sewing box then the best thing is to try them to find which one you like best. It will depend to some extent on the … Read more
Stitched leaves often employ a fan style stitch where most of the thread goes from points on the rim of the leaf into a single hole where it joins the stem. This can easily be converted to a loop stitch using the same holes but having much less thread on the back of the card. … Read more
As you know 50% of the work is stitched from the back of your card and 50% is stitched from the front. The stitching diagram shows you the view of the front of the card. When you turn the card over to work from the back you get a reverse image of the pattern. If … Read more
There are several stitching fonts available from the Stitching Cards web site. When one of these is installed on your computer you can use any of your word processing programs to type words of your choice ready to stitch. These fonts have dots instead of lines and you stitch between the dots in the usual … Read more
People sometimes ask if I do my own stitching when I design a card. The answer is that I do stitch them myself. I see it as part of the design process. It enables me to refine the design by having first hand knowledge of how it is working. This brings me to the subject … Read more
When a pattern includes an S shaped curve that is worked with evenly spaced stitches along its length it is hard to visualise. The section where the curve changes from an inside curve to an outside curve is the tricky part. Once you realise how it works it is just a matter of continuing the … Read more
Some prick and stitch patterns are easy to follow whilst others are very complex. The easy ones tend to have shapes based on circles and curves. When the design involves realistic shapes such as human figures, the shapes become more random. The result is that the dots are harder to follow. If you find the … Read more
When you are stitching your pattern it is very inconvenient and confusing if you missed one or two holes when you were pricking it out. This is most likely to happen where the holes are in a random pattern or there are lots of them in a small area. When I have finished pricking out … Read more
If you make a lot of stitching cards with beads it is worth getting, or making, a bead tray. This will keep your beads in one place and stop them rolling away and getting lost on the floor. The main features of a bead tray are the base covering of material such as felt that … Read more