Debbie

As I progressed as a stitcher, I became aware that there was this technique called “stitching over 2”. I knew absolutely nothing about it, but I wanted to do a project I saw in a magazine that was “over 2”, so i bought the supplies at the local needlework shop and dug in. I was […]

Way back before I became a designer, I took a year to cross stitch an afghan. That was the only project I worked on all year. (I’m one of those weird, one-project-at-a-time stitchers.) My children both loved it, and started asking whose it would be when I passed on. Mind you, I was in my

Early on, as I began stitching, I thought stitching gifts would be a wonderful idea. It was the perfect hand-made touch. I didn’t have much money, but I did have time; cotton floss wasn’t that expensive, and I could pick up patterns and supplies for reasonable cost. I remember one Christmas I stitched cartoon characters

Today I’m starting a series of posts about the logic, or the zen of stitching. Why does a stitch need to be made a particular way? Does the order of the strokes of a stitch matter? When I teach in person, I try to get the students out of the diagrams and to think of

Today will be a long day, spent in a hospital waiting room. So of course I’m taking some stitching with me. Not just any stitching, but something small, that doesn’t require a lot of concentration, that can be put down quickly, that doesn’t require constant referring to a chart. What kind of stitching meets all

  Countdown to Christmas! Do you do that? I seem to be surprised by Christmas every year. I know it’s coming, I always resolve to get ready for it earlier, but then I look up and it’s here. I come from a generation that had an orderly progression of the holidays – we observed Halloween,

A little early to be thinking about Christmas, isn’t it? Actually, stitchers probably think about Christmas and the holidays, or at least holiday stitching, a good part of the year. If we don’t, it’s on us and we haven’t gotten our stitching done! In the last week, I’ve stitched 8 Christmas ornaments. Yes, 8! This

“Stitch when you’re young and poor, frame when you’re old and rich!” I saw this line once and thought how true! We can stitch like crazy, finish all sorts of projects, but when we get to the framers – yowza! I can still remember the first really big framing job I had done, and how

I posed a question on my Facebook page, asking which challenges face stitchers. A few have responded, and believe it or not, I have the same challenges. The challenge I’ll address today is “finding time to stitch”. Stitchers tell me it must be nice to sit at home all day and stitch, because I’m a

I’m just back from the 9th annual Needle Arts Mystery Retreat weekend. This fun retreat is a collaboration with my partners, Linda Reinmiller, Patricia Hartman and Mary Knapp. The four of us invite stitchers to join us every July for a counted canvas project that we’ve designed together, but the stitchers don’t see the project