Do You Stitch Late at Night?

We cannot always enjoy our favourite pastime of stitching whenever we want to. The demands of work, family needs and general household chores can mean that stitching time can often be moved down the list of priorities.

Rebellion does exist however in some camps. Stitching expert, Jane Greenoff sells a wonderful design kit with the words: ‘Cross Stitch Forever – Housework Whenever’ from her Cross Stitch Guild website.

Kit from:The Cross Stitch Guild

There is also an ongoing forum discussion about how to fit more stitching into the day on the wonderful knitting website, Ravelry. For many of us, however, we often stitch late at night, when the clamour of life ceases, and we can relax.

This can present a number of challenges – and solutions too:

Artificial Light

Poor light can produce eyestrain and the possibility of stitching mistakes, especially in colour recognition and counting. A daylight lamp or a halogen light can produce excellent illumination for our projects. It is important not to struggle with a bedside lamp or dimmed lights.

Tiredness

This can produce poor quality work through loss of concentration. Mistakes - such as dropped stitches or miscounting - are increased, and there is the possibility of falling asleep over your stitching. The solution is to know your limitations, and stop working when you know that you are tired. Another way to spend your late-night leisure time is to spend your time catching up on your favourite stitching websites instead of stitching. This is a great way to update your stitching knowledge.

Perils of Stitching in Bed

Some people who have mobility problems, or are disabled or convalescing may have no choice but to cross stitch in bed. This can be done easily, provided you prop yourself up well with pillows or cushions, making sure your back is well supported. Do use a good light, and keep your stitching paraphernalia tidy, in a box. The obvious danger is that scissors or needles can get lost among the bed linen. Tempting though it may be to spread out your equipment on the bed in front of you, it is very important to confine your stash to a box that cannot be flipped over by a sudden movement. Better still, a box of stitching goodies can be kept on a bedside table for easy access.

Happy night-time stitching!

Getting Fit to Stitch

At this lovely time of year, flowers are abundant, and May’s blooms include bluebells, primroses and violets, all wonderful themes for stitching.

Stitching is often cited as being an important influence on people attempting to take up new lifestyles that avoid bad habits – smoking, alcohol abuse, eating disorders – purely by its capacity to distract the mind from the vices that can ruin our lives and produce improved self esteem.

Also, as the weather becomes warmer, and as we shed our thick winter woollies, many of us are aware that we need to become more fit and toned for the summer months.



Shaun the Sheep: Exercise Time Mini

Ref. SS00100

http://www.coatscrafts.co.uk/

This cross stitch kit - showing Shaun the Sheep doing his workout - is a great way to motivate stitchers to keep up exercise regimes. And while everyone is thinking of self improvement, how about spending some odd moments this month learning something new… French knots? Hardanger? Cable stitches? Hobbies are always more interesting if some challenges are involved, so trying something new right now may bring great rewards.

Knit a Square

Do you crochet or knit for charity?

I enjoy contributing to the worldwide knitting for charity project, Knit-a-square. It is relaxing and easy to do, and progress is fast. The organisation values all contributions to this knitting project for the AIDS orphans of southern Africa. It is estimated that there are 14.8 million orphans in sub-saharan Africa. 1.9 million live in South Africa.

Many of these children have been abandoned, living in great poverty in shack settlements. Some head up families of their siblings together with other children. Others live alone, without shelter, in hills and dumps around the cities.  While other children's charities work hard to provide food and shelter for them, this charity provides warmth and comfort. That is where knitters and crocheters can help.

You can send in your carefully measured knitted/crocheted squares to the charity in South Africa, and volunteers will make up the blankets. If you prefer, you can make a square vest, a square pullover or a hat to keep the children warm, many of whom are often without shelter during the day. Or supply a small knitted toy. Please, however keep to the patterns suggested by the charity.  If you would like a hat/square pullover/square vest pattern, just visit the website for instructions.

And what if you would like to help but cannot knit? Well no worries, because the charity supplies a how-to-knit help for complete beginners.

Obviously, the squares have to be exactly the right size (8” square) in order that they can be put together neatly to make up a blanket. Again, there are full instructions for knitting and crocheting on the Knit a Square website, as well as postal instructions and advice for sending your knitted items.

 Knit a Square

Painfree Stitching: A Guide

Stitching - as an embroiderer, knitter, crocheter or quilter - is definitely not a dangerous occupation. Nevertheless, poor posture, repetitive actions and bad habits can cause a great deal of pain and problems over a long time. The best way to tackle these problems is by prevention. 

Here are some tips that will help you remain painfree as you stitch…

1. Stop stitching immediately if you feel pain. Analyse why the pain exists  (- consider the next tip) and find the best way of managing your problem.

2. Stop stitching when you feel tired or sense that you are using additional muscles to continue your work (such as bracing your elbows against the arm of your chair).

3.  Stitch in good light to avoid eye strain. Position yourself by a window, so that light is cast on your work. Invest in a craft light for evening stitching. Have your eyes tested regularly, and make sure your eye glasses prescription is updated as necessary.

4. Consider your posture while you stitch. Slumping on a sofa will produce aches and pains, as will leaning to one side in a chair. Make sure your back is well supported, your feet are on the floor and that your head does not strain forwards. Your project should be held in a midline position, with your neck and shoulders feeling relaxed.

5. Every few minutes, get up for a stretch and a walk around the room.  Focus your eyes on a distant object and shake out your arms and hands.

  
6. Any peristent pain should be checked by a qualified medical practioner.

These basic tips to injury prevention should help you avoid any injuries and allow you to stitch painlessly in the future.

Creative Springtime Designs

May is my favourite time of the year. The sights, sounds and scents of nature are at their best. Any trip outdoors is greeted with birdsong, a pleasant temperature and sights of plants, flowers and the occasional butterfly that remind me of Springtime.

Perhaps you are inspired to recreate this feeling throughout the year by stitching a design that represents this beautiful time. The shapes, textures and colours of your design can be expressed  easily through the wide range of threads, yarns and fabrics easily available. Creativity does not come naturally to all of us, but any sort of expression in stitches can help to develop it.

Being creative will involve some practical skills as well as ideas. I personally have found the book Picture It in Cross Stitch Today by the late Jo Verso very helpful. It is especially good for those who do not wish to sit in front of a computer screen when they design. Jo describes the practicalities of getting your ideas into a paper design, and laying out the results to form  the exact results you want. It is particularly useful for the design of samplers or stitched scrapbook pages.

Another source of help and inspiration is the help available from the wonderful Jane Greenoff and her Cross Stitch Guild. If you click on the link to Stitchers’ Study, you will find an article on making your own charts (patterns) by Sue Hawkins and Jane Greenoff which shares meticulous details of how to transfer your own ideas into a cross stitch chart.

For those who wish to create a design from a picture or photograph, my favourite design software is called IStitch, and it comes (again) from Jane Greenoff. It is available from the Cross Stitch Guild. Not only does this program transfer your picture into a chart, but it labels the exact colours in the main brands of threads, which means that you know exactly the right colours to get going.

If you want to recreate Spring through stitches without creating your own design, then the easiest way is to choose a chart or kit made by an expert stitcher. The design will have been test-stitched by experienced professionals, so you will know that the finished result will look good. Here is a favourite of mine, designed by Mary Hickmott and available from Stitch Direct. 

 

Introducing 'Fine Cell Work'

In this blog, we invesitgate the therapeutic effects of stitching. There can be no doubt that that this pastime can contribute to a happier, calmer and more contented life for everyone. However, there is now evidence to show that stitching can benefit the community through rehabilitative effects to prisoner programmes in the UK.

Fine Cell Work provides materials and volunteer instructors to enable prisoners to learn and do embroidery in their cells. The results are  cushions, quilts, rugs and tapestries which are of the highest quality and design and in great demand. Prisoners are allowed to keep some of the proceeds, to spend inside, or for when they complete their sentences.

More than 400 jailed stitchers, 80 per cent of them male, are currently involved in this work. The real value of this charity, however, is not measured in cash or stitches, but in the therapeutic effects on some of the toughest criminals in the penal system, according to a recent investigation by The Times newspaper. The newspaper quotes the words of KR,  a prisoner and a hardened man. His builder’s hands do not look appropriate for the delicate, intricate task of needlework. Before his prison sentence, those hands were principally employed in drinking and fighting. He admitted   ‘My whole lifestyle was a route to prison. I used to drink a lot. I was unfaithful a lot. I wasn’t a good person. I learned to shut down my emotions and feelings.’KR  calculated that he drank an average of 110 pints a week for ten years. In 2001, he was convicted of a violent crime and sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment.

In Maidstone prison, he was introduced to Fine Cell Work and picked up a needle and thread for the first time in his life. The meditative, repetitive effort of sewing intricate patterns offered him a sort of peace he had never found before. ‘It took me six weeks to make my first cushion, working eight hours a day. It seemed to take forever. In the time I spent doing six inches of cushion I could double-glaze your house, and the conservatory. I completed something I didn’t think I’d ever do.’

Needlework gave him time to reflect, a mental escape from clanging cell doors, confinement and constant surveillance.

Other inmates followed KR's example and he found himself giving lessons on sewing techniques. The prison authorities allowed him to keep supplies of wool and needles in his cell. New recruits would sometimes be mocked and bullied for “doing women’s work”, but not for long.

Prison authorities contend that the concentration and hard work required and the small financial gains give prisoners an increased sense of self worth. Wardens approve because sewing reduces stress and requires no supervision.

The idea of encouraging prisoners to sew is not new, but for most of the past two centuries the most attractive item a prisoner would ever sew was a mail bag.

KR believes that his early release was due in part to his commitment to needlework. ‘It helped me sort my life out. I came out a calmer, better person. I don’t want to drink.’ He is working as a double-glazer, seeing his children — and still sewing.

There is an old saying: ‘When life throws you scraps, make a quilt.’ That is essentially what Fine Cell Work achieves, by helping prisoners such as KR to piece together torn-up lives, one stitch at a time.

Alternatives to Stitching (1) … A Peg Loom

Many people who enjoy needlework of any kind are devastated if they get some sort of medical condition – whether it is arthritis, carpel tunnel syndrome or traumatic injury - that prevents them from gripping and manipulating needles.

I have been looking into this recently on discovering that a friend has just given up her favourite hobby in despair, having difficulties with holding her knitting needles.

There are many alternatives that spring to mind as a substitute. Two of the most popular are knitting looms and peg looms. I’ll deal with the knitting loom on another day, but now I would like to share some experiences I have had with a peg loom that may be of interest.

I cannot guarantee that if you have weakened hands, you will automatically be able to use a peg loom. All I can say, however, is that a peg loom uses different muscle groups, and does not involve a gripping action, as do sewing and knitting.

The picture shows me using a peg loom. It is very simple – there are no nasty complexities. You can choose how many pegs you use (and thus, the width of the completed item). You literally just weave your yarn in and out of the pegs, paying attention to maintaining even tension, and progress is surprisingly fast. I preferred to dangle the warp threads into a basket. This is a useful tip if you have curious cats, dogs – or toddlers – who are fascinated by the movement of the threads and may decide to grab and pull them.

I experimented with some herdwick wool; however, I was disappointed with the results, as the weave was loose and insubstantial. A thicker wool did not improve matters much. I therefore would recommend that anyone using a peg loom that the best substance to weave would be thin strips of fabric, much like those used in the making of rag rugs. The quality of the finished object will reflect the quality of the chosen materials, of course. People have used old tights or plastic bags for purpose of rug making, but if you can source some interesting or even luxury fabric, and choose your colours to coordinate well, this will look much better.

You can buy peg looms (with various numbers of peg-holes) from auction websites. A woodturner could make one for you, but the pegs need to be super-smooth in order to prevent snags or splinters.

Inspired Stitches

Lynn Turner lives in a cottage overlooking the beautiful sea loch in Shieldaig, Torridon. She works part-time as  a designer and knitter, and sells her varied items that include crocheted bags, scarves, brooches and tea cosies in local craft shops and producers’ markets. Her achievements and success are enviable, but life has not always treated Lynn kindly.

A few years ago, she had a car accident that left her with an excruciating back injury. She was forced to give up her work as a landscape architect, and spent a lot of time at home, isolated from colleagues and without an income. Friends and family members’ birthdays loomed, and Lynn decided to make them presents instead of buy them. She shopped in local charity shops for yarn and kneedles, and using creative fair, inherited from her mother and encouraged by her sister, she knitted presents that were met with delight. Taking a holiday break, she found an old crochet hook on the window ledge of her holiday cottage and within minutes, she had taught herself to crochet too. Soon, she was hooked! She says, ‘After my back injury and enforced isolation, I lost my confidence and self-worth. I became clinically depressed. Creating something beautiful with yarn and needles or hook gave me back a feeling that I was good at  something, and productive, after all.’  From making presents and doing commissions, Lynn now spends much of the  wintertime knitting her stock, and then these are sold locally to enthusiastic customers during the spring and summer months.

Lynn is inspired mostly by the beauty of nature – the colours of the surrounding landscape are reflected in her yarn choices, and she experiments with textures to produce one-off works of art at an affordable price.

Typically, Lynn is modest about her achievements. She believes that anyone can knit or crochet if they just decide they want to, and an advanced floral design was her first attempt at knitting, years ago. She loved the pattern so much, she decided she would have a try, and with determination, success followed. She says, ‘Anyone can be a a good knitter by just learning how to cast on, cast off and knit and purl. It is a cheap hobby, because yarn and needles can almost always be found in charity shops.’

Lynn’s top tip: If you want to learn a technique or a type of stitch, then just access a search engine on the internet, and enter: ‘how to [name the technique/stitch]’. There are YouTube videos demonstrating just about every technique there is, and you can learn so much by looking at a close-up view of an expert showing how it is done.