As I’ve been thinking about the theme of this month’s posts, I have realized that using the tools of my needlepoint more prudently and more productively has made me a better and more creative stitcher.
We so often fall into a trap of wishing things were endless, that we could buy any canvas we wanted, that we had every color of every thread, that e never had to worry about money.
But the reality is that scarcity makes for better needlepoint, just as “neccessity is the mother of invention.” When something is scarce or restricted, it forces us too look at things in a new way.
When we do so great things begin to happen. Take the adobe church from yesterday’s post. I bought it from Canvases Be Gone when she had a big dede sale because it reminded me of a lovely church in Santa Fe. It went into my stash.
Even when I redid one of our rooms and stitched another of the dede’s from that purchase, it stayed in the stash. I got a sample of Valdani threads to try and they were the perfect color, so out it came.
But did I want to buy the other threads I needed? No. So thread became a scarce resource. I pulled from stash. The color didn’t always match exactly and some textures weren’t ideal. But those things made me think harder about my stitch choices.
Church stitched I had to think about the background and finishing. I decided I wanted to use a ready-made frame. Because of the canvas size the frame has to be square and 4×4. These are not easy to find, but I figured one would come my way (it did, at Michael’s, it was perfect and on clearance). At the same time I looked for a background thread. THe thread I picked is a discontinued one from my stash. Since I didn’t have much and couldn’t get more, I had to pick a background that woulds be frugal (it barely lasted anyway). That scarcity for the background led me to the pretty solution.
Would I have come up with better if I had more resources probably not. I would not have had limits to hit and to force me into being inventive.
This is a recent example but I find this again and again in my stitching. LImitations and scarcity give us big bang ideas and make us better stitchers.
About Janet M Perry
Janet Perry is the Internet's leading authority on needlepoint. She designs, teaches and writes, getting raves from her fans for her innovative techniques, extensive knowledge and generous teaching style. A leading writer of stitch guides, she blogs here and lives on an island in the northeast corner of the SF Bay with her family
Great lesson, Janet!
Often when many of us buy a canvas, we briefly look at our stash and then decide to buy new threads just because some of of our threads might not have the ‘perfect’ texture or ‘ideal’ color. It is often educational and also a great deal of fun to pick a lot of our threads from our stash and work with them. Sometimes, as you mentioned, if we do not have a lot of a specific color of thread, we might have to opt to choose a different stitch pattern.
Remember an earlier post of yours when you selected a variety of shades of specific colors from your stash and worked with them. As I recall, your final piece came out gorgeous!
Wow Jane! You hit the nail on the head when a customer goes shopping for thread too! After all, a shopowner cannot POSSIBLY jam every thread line from every designer into their shops (i.e. mine is 900 sq. ft.) Not every stitcher is as open to creativity as some actually demand the “perfect color” or the “EXACT THREAD” that a stitch guide or chart calls for. We have so many to choose from nowadays that some forget it wasn’t always that way and that “close enough” is often a better option. After all, a stitcher’s creativity can obviously make something out of “close enough!” Don’t forget to ask your LNS what she has that is CLOSE to what your heart desires and you may just surprise yourself with what you can do with it like Jane did!
Thanks, you said this so well. I love the idea of “close enough.”
Keep Stitching,
Janet