It’s likely that unless you live in a no-news bubble you have heard about or seen evidence of the supply chain crisis. While the shelves at our stores aren’t empty, I feel as if this problem has been stalking me all year. It’s certainly helping me learn patience.
I’ll leave out the delays with remodeling caused by supply problems and the coat overruns that accompanied it. I’ll ignore the huge lines at my local Costco gas station because its gas is 40 cents cheaper than at the regular gas stations.
But it does affect needlepoint. Certain colors of thread are hard to find. They are sold out and new stocks have not come in. New canvases coming from designers are taking 5-6 months (it was 6-8 weeks a year ago) to arrive from painting services. Certain popular sizes and colors of blank canvas are hard to find.
All this has changed my buying and shopping habits. I no longer buy a painted canvas unless the store says that it is in stock. That way I know I can count on it coming quickly, even if it goes into stash. I check with designers before I pick canvases for labs and classes. I stitch more from stash.
But it’s still frustrating. And I find myself suffering from a famine mindset. I’m so worried that I won’t have something to stitch. I buy more canvases. I’ve also put into place habits old and new to make this supply chain problem less onerous. Here are my ideas:
- Create your own projects. If you need blank canvas and can’t find some at your LNS, try eBay. I often see blank canvas pieces there. My new membership site has a growing selection of items that are free for you to transfer to create your own projects.
- Keep a stock of your essential threads. I’ve talked about this before, but you should stock up when you can on some basics (see my article about it here). Having these will often allow you to complete projects without buying additional threads. You’ll feel even better when you realize many of these threads are exactly the ones you can’t find in your store.
- Be flexible in your choice of threads. Be willing to substitute threads or colors of the given or preferred colors that are not available. The chances are very good that you won’t remember the “right” thread once your project is stitched.
- Shop your stash first. Although with two years of pretty much only using stash threads, some colors are getting a bit thin, I can still complete many projects by shopping the stash. Remember your stash has no supply chain problems.
- Reuse your supplies. I keep stretcher bars and reuse them until they break. I keep extra needles and store them with my magnets. I have a little box of threaders and a small pot that has cheap short scissors. I reuse my project bags until the zippers break. When you do this, not only are you being thrifty, but you will have these on hand when you want to start a project.
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
BFromM says
These are all good suggestions. Of course, I would have to actually finish projects to reuse my stretcher bars! Ha ha!
Janet M Perry says
I know that feeling. Sometimes to find more bars or tacks, I’ll take UFO’s i’m not actively working on off the bars.
Keep stitching,
Janet