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Continuing my discourse about which threads I use and why I use them! Before I leave the solid cottons though, I haven’t mentioned Anchor. I don’t use Anchor because it’s not available in my area, and I have never been able to get any from the distributors. This brings up an important point in my […]

With so many thread lines on the market, how do I choose which ones to use? Very good question! When I started DebBee’s Designs 10 years ago the choices were more limited, but still a staggering array from which to select. I pretty quickly settled into a few standards – DMC cotton flosses and pearl

The bread and butter of every needlework designer is thread. Thread is our medium, how we do what we do, our “paint”. We surround ourselves with it, with color cards, floss rings, whole thread lines, and never have enough. One of the questions that I get asked a lot is how do I decide which

I hate making mistakes! Especially in my charts, because usually that means someone has to frog stitches. And I know how much I loathe ripping out! In my distant past, I studied journalism in college and was editor of the college paper. Part of my job was to correct mistakes in the stories submitted by

OK, confession time – how many of you have started a project, then lost interest? You were excited when you bought the chart, loved the threads when you pulled them, couldn’t wait to put in the first stitches, then your interest waned and the project got put aside. I know in my conversations with stitchers

New Year’s resolutions. Did you make any? Do you make the same ones every year? I’ve decided I’m really too old to make resolutions, or to wait for the turn of the year to start something new. I did decide to tackle the holiday pounds right after the start of the year, got waylaid by

Next year DebBee’s Designs will be 10 years old! So much has happened in the first ten years, and I wish I could say that I had planned it all. We have met many of our goals, most of them set on those long drives to trade shows. Where do we want to be next

“It must be SOOOO nice to be a designer, and to sit around and stitch ALLL day!” I’ve heard this expressed many times, and I just wish it were true! The fact is, being a designer is not the glam life many stitchers imagine it to be. Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t trade

Well, the journey is over. All the loose ends have been safely tucked away, all the stitching done. I had a few decisions to make at the end, mostly about the background stitch and finishing the tulle. For the background stitch I decided to go with a thread-saving version of  a trellis cross. Usually a

My vision for Diamond Delight 10 always included an unconventional addition – tulle. This has led to some creative problem solving and managing the tulle as the project developed. Unlike Black Magic, where the tulle was added last and tacked in place, I wanted to stitch on the tulle, create layers with it, and incorporate