12.5" x 11.5"

The story of "Japanese Ribbons"

I became hooked on taking needlepoint workshops.

I loved the camaraderie, having a teacher to guide me along, learning new techniques, discovering new fibers, finding out that it's important to know canvas counts and needle sizes. The fear that I had was, when would I stop taking courses and have the confidence to do my own thing. That happened about two years later.

I was blessed to fall in with a group of stitchers who became my friends and mentors. They are there to discuss critique and encourage. Sometimes, we seem to needlepoint "by committee". We have been together for about eight years and we still stitch together once a month.

This piece titled Japanese Ribbons and was designed by the late Louise S. Meier. My instructor and I jointly designed the open work border.

Although I wasn't a beginner stitcher, I was a novice to the vast world of the variety of available fibers and canvases. I had only stitched with wool or cotton to this point! I entered the real world of current needlepoint while stitching this beautiful piece.

The most valuable lesson that I learned from this course was how to work with floss to blend and shade colours. I have expanded on the technique, taking it further by blending and shading several colors simultaneously. I like to call this "needle painting". It's a form of optic mixing which I find to be very expressive, allowing me an infinite variety of colour options just as a painter mixes paint on a palette.

>Click within the stitchings to see the detail images: