Orts – My Needle's Song

Chart Conversions

Amazing what you come across when you update files. This is a draft that has been sitting here for a couple of *years* now, unpublished. With so many stitchers asking about doing their own chart conversions, this is probably even more relevant now.

A couple of years back, I was working with a group on making a special request quilt for somebody in Michigan. Usually, it is no issue. I find the image I like, I import it, clean it up, and then stitch. We were packing to move at the time, and my time was tight. That little light bulb in my head went off… I bet I can find the chart I want if I search. Sure enough I did. The image on the seller’s website looked perfect, exactly what I wanted. The size of the chart was a little small, but I could live with it. I bought the chart, downloaded the file.. and died.

This seller had merely taken the image and gone to a free digital conversion site called Pic2Pat and gone through their process. How do I know? That site logo was on the chart I had just paid for!! There was no stitch count, no center marks. What should have been a one or two color chart somehow turned into a 26 color monstrosity. Here’s a tiny section of the chart:

I am sure you all heard me scream. This should have been so straightforward because the design has such clean lines. Now, I am not blaming the seller. With sites like Pic2Pat, you can convert anything quickly and easily. I seriously doubt the site is meant for anything other than personal conversions. Here’s the same area from the black and white chart the seller included:

Pretty messy, and certainly nothing I would want to stitch from or send on for a charity quilt. So, I found the image I wanted to stitch, stripped out the background and narrowed the colors down to 2 so that I had nice clean lines. Then I went and looked up the correct colors for this. All in all, I spent a good hour doing this one. Here’s a section of my chart:

Mine does have grid lines and will be nice and easy to work from. The lines are clean. I did end up adding backstitching in the same color just to finish it off.

I did make some classic mistakes when I bought this chart. First off, most of the shopping platforms allow you to have more than one photo. When I put up my charts, I do include a segment of the chart so that people can see what they are going to be stitching from. Second, there was no picture of a completed piece. This is crucial to me. It means a stitcher has actually worked from that chart and finished it. Scary, but as I look through Etsy for new designs, I see more and more of this kind of work.

It isn’t that hard to make a quality chart from a picture. You can use free services like the Pic2Pat mentioned above. PC Stitch also has an import function, and DMC has a photo conversion package. But even nicer is the service from Simon over at Thread Bare. You can use his software for free, or engage his services for a very low fee. It does take time and skill to make it come out looking just the way you want it.

Until next time, Happy Stitching!

Input Needed!

Many of you know that I do make small gift items (like magnets) and Christmas ornaments for sale in my various shops. My husband and I decided that we will now be donating at least 50% of the sales price to no-kill animal shelters. I will be doing a couple of special sets that will have 100% of the sales price donated to these shelters. I cleared out all of the ornaments I had on hand and am starting fresh.

What kinds of items do you look for when buying small gifts? I do try to keep my prices down to between $5 and 10 before shipping so that it is always affordable. Some of my ideas have been refrigerator magnets, mug mats, bookmarks, blank greeting cards, and of course Christmas ornaments. I also have some designs for small pictures that would be a little more expensive, but not terribly.

But what to stitch? Just in Christmas ornaments alone, I have snowmen, Santas, angels, animals, primitives, folk-art, vintage… well, you get the idea. I do collect cat ornaments as well. I have fallen in love with the tonttu designs and begun collecting those as well.

I would love some feedback. Drop on over to my Facebook Page and leave me some ideas, please. (The ornaments above were done for family, but I would be happy to do them again and sell them for $6 each. The tonttu fits into a nice 5″ greeting card, but he can be finished as an ornament too. I like the idea of making him into a removable ornament so that you can take the ornament off the card and hang it on your tree year after year. Though I now have a die-cutter to make these cards, I also like attaching the ornament right to the card, so it becomes the design itself.)

Lots of ideas, and lots of directions we can go…

Finishes and New Beginnings

Silence is almost always a good thing around here. It means I have taken the time away from the computer to stitch. I’ve been working hard the last few weeks to get things done. since we chatted last I have finished the Spiderman and sent him on his way to Canada. He will be turned into a pillow for a very special young man.

I also finished a piece for another group. This is an anniversary stitch along, and each stitcher gets to put their own spin on the design by picking out the colors. These are usually fun stitches. Mine also got to take a trip to Stockholm as my husband and I took a lovely overnight cruise. I never ever go anywhere without my stitching! It’s like my pacifier. Even if I don’t stitch I still have it with me. If we are stuck waiting someplace, I can just take it out of my bag and stitch. Very comforting at times.

Also finished this week were my Christmas ornaments that go to that same group. Every year in July they post this event and collect a pretty good number of ornaments. These are turned into Christmas ornaments and then auctioned off to raise funds for no-kill animal shelters. These ornaments are always fun to do, and nice quick projects.

Even the more complex Precious Moments ones took a maximum of 2 days. I know these will help the shelters a lot. The auction usually happens on Facebook, and I will post a link to it once it starts, usually in late October.

One thing that has helped is a Facebook group that has grown like crazy the last 6 months. They are always holding events to help us get our stitching done. Somehow, when everyone is stitching like crazy, the combined energy seem to find its way to our individual needles and we all get more done.

In between all of this excitement, I managed to stitch 2 squares for Canada Stitches. The first one is the same flower heart I used for my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday, but with a yellow rose for healing. This one wasn’t bad. Stitched on Aida, it took me less than 2 weeks, and includes backstitching every leaf and petal.

This second one was done as an stand-by square. Hearts are always in need, and designs like this can be used for so many of the request quilts. This was another very fast stitch done using a free chart found out there on the ‘net. I used the Azalea blend of DMC’s Color Variations, but did the butterfly itself in a matching purple. It will be interesting to see where it ends up.

And there you have it. All caught up on the finishes. For the new beginnings, I really can’t show you much yet because it is a gift for my mother and secondly, I haven’t taken a stitch yet. New beginnings also includes an upcoming restart on the website for Canada Stitches and a couple of others. I think with some care and planning I can do my charity stitching *AND* my personal stitching. I just need balance. I can do my websites and stitch – I just have to pace myself. My stitching queue is again full, with 4 more pieces holding, several in the thinking about doing phase. I am taking a few days to catch things up for the shops and get some personal stitching done. I’m going back to dividing my time – 4 days for me and my shops and 3 days for charity. That is still almost almost half of my time devoted to them. It should also help me keep my promise to my husband of no more than 2 charity squares per month. Let’s see how long this lasts…

Until next time, Happy Stitching!

Creeping Ever Closer!

It’s been a rough couple of days here. I decided to move from my beloved webhost in the US to a smaller, less expensive webhost in the UK. I moved 7 WordPress blogs and 5 other websites. What a learning curve!! I think almost everything is back to normal now. This site has a fresh look with a few more features. I think I am liking it. Now that the dust is settling, I can finally get back to stitching more.

My charity stitching is winding down for the year. At the beginning of the year I made a resolution to stitch a maximum of 1 charity square per month. By April, I had already exceeded that, so I stopped raising my hand to stitch more until next year. I do still have a couple of projects going, so I am not completely done. I do have a gallery going of the projects I have done so far this year – 18 for various groups, 1 for family family, and several small ornaments. I still have 1 charity square in progress, 2 more in line, and an annual Christmas ornament SAL to do. This is July….

Mind you, I am not complaining here. I am commenting. I always have these family things creep up on me, or shop deadlines and I have not stitched what I had planned to do. When my stitching hours were taken over by school, I did not cut back on my charity obligations. In fact, I think I took on even more – with less time to do them!

So, I think it is time to get off of here and stitch. Spidey is calling me! I am in a Facebook group that does a lot of stitching events and I need to have 1100 stitches done on him in the next two days. I have 400 done…. we can do this….

Welcome!!

Things look all shiny and new again! Nothing like moving from one host to another to make you clean up your act! I still have a few things to do, but that is normal when you make a lot of changes.

I am an avid cross stitcher, one who gets the chance to stitch just about every single day. I always promised myself I would do that one day – when I retired. Now that I am officially retired I make sure I stitch every chance I get. I actively stitch for a group called Canada Stitches that does all sorts of projects for First Responders coping with PTSD/PTSI as well as families visiting Ronald McDonald House. Not only is it a great way to use spare time, it also gives me a reason to keep shopping for new stash!

Thank you so much for stopping by and I hope you enjoy the posts below.

The Writing on the Wall

Every once in a while, it is great to pause and read the writing on the wall. I try to do that every few months to see if I am still moving in the direction I want to go. When I did that in January, the writing on the wall said, “Over Committed”. Wow.. yeah. How did they know? I stitch for 4 charity groups and love it. I get to try my hand at custom designs and I get a great excuse to shop for more stash. But.. Over Committed. It rang in my ears. Then it hit home.

Find the Beauty - Butterfly Wings from Stoney Creek

My husband’s beloved aunt and godmother turned 70 in December. Between school and all of my charity promises, I failed to stitch anything for this very important birthday. I was so very crushed. She is always so very interested in everything I am stitching and here I could not make time to do anything for her.

Fortunately, my husband and I had picked out the pattern last year but I just hadn’t had a chance to stitch it. I quickly kitted it up and stitched like a fool for 2 weeks. My in-laws rushed it to the framer who did this gorgeous work (and it is perfectly stretched!). I had it done just in time because they were going to go visit her the following week. (Find the Beauty, Butterfly Wings, Stoney Creek. Stitched on white 28 count linen from DMC). The worst part for me was I was feeling guilty over not working on my charity stitching during this time. What? Yeah. I had a full drawer of pieces that I had promised to stitch. I felt rotten and evil for pausing to do this once-in-a-lifetime piece for a beloved aunt. That writing on the wall was screaming at me now.

I went through the same guilt feelings when I worked on this small piece momdone for my mother for Christmas last year. I could hear that voice in my ear the entire time, “How dare you! You ungrateful thing you!” It was my mother’s 89th Christmas. We needed to not only have it stitched, but framed and then shipped back to the US, all before Christmas and I did not get a chance to start it until NOVEMBER. (Feathered Friend, Laurel Burch by Mill Hill). Why? Because between school and the other charity stitching I was working on, I didn’t have time. How can you not have time for your own mother?

She didn’t have it for Christmas, but it wasn’t terribly late, and she knew something was coming. We also had a postal strike about the time we should have shipped it, so there was some delay.

ornaments2015

I also had to rush to do these small ornaments. The round ones were given to my teachers at language school as a small Christmas gift and a thank you. They constantly admired my stitching and enjoyed seeing the progress. I did not have these done for the last day of school, but I did get to deliver them the following week.

My husband has a new family member and it was important to do a First Christmas ornament for her, too. These really did not take me that much time to do and finish. Still, that voice nagged me. I had pieces I had to stitch and I dared to take time out to do ones I needed to do. Mind you, none of the ones in my queue had a time deadline, either. They were just all “Get them done so we can see how many more we need to make” kind of things. When did it happen that I let charity pieces become more important than my own family and friends?

eila One piece I started well in advance was this one for my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday. These are huge events here in Finland. We do celebrate each birthday as well as name-day but, the decade birthdays are extra special. My husband and my father-in-law helped me pick this design nearly a year in advance. We had it done plenty early to get it framed.

Still, I knew something had to change. When I made my New Years’ Resolutions I said I was going to do 1 piece a month for my charities. I am already well past that point for this year. Who really keeps their Resolutions anyway? In the past 18 months or so, I have done well over 50 pieces for charities, but only 3 pieces and 6 ornaments for my family. I used to do a collection of ornaments for family and friends every year but those spare hours I had for stitching were now spent learning Finnish. It means that I have had no time to do anything for the shop in over a year.

There is also the matter of the cost of materials. In January, when I finished kitting up the pieces I had promised to do I realized I was short on fabric. Fabric is very expensive here compared to the US. We could not afford to buy more until this past week. A yard of this special Aida cloth we use runs about $25 US here. I get 9 squares from each yard. I was also out of some colors of thread. Sigh…

Half-way into April and I already have 15 charity pieces completed for the year and 6 more in progress. I need to stop and read the writing on the wall… “Over Committed” and stop making promises. That doesn’t mean I will ever stop doing charity pieces. It means I will have to be a lot more selective about who and what I stitch for. I need to step away from the world for a while and just focus on what I have promised to do….

I will update my progress on the pieces in progress over the weekend. Right now, I just need to go stitch… and read the writing on the wall again.

Getting Closer…

We actually have set Tuesday as a day to start taking new pictures. I have an idea for the header for the shops. I am hoping we have a sunny day in store so our lighting is better. Looking at the weather, that probably isn’t going to happen, but we will make the best of what we do have. Spring is coming to Western Finland. I see little buds on the birch trees and berry bushes. Our days are getting nice and long now. Before long, it will be summer!

Of course, this is the first weekend of the month, and that means it is time to work on Christmas ornaments. These are from Jean Farish Needlework’s Jingle Babies. I did not do the border or sentiment on this set as I really don’t know how they will be finished yet. I do need to add the beads, but that happens after I wash them. I love the primitive look of these designs.

The stitched area on these are about 2×2, so they will be nice additions to any tree. I love smaller ornaments because they fit in so many more places! Most of the ornaments out there are twice this size. The lamb will have bright red beads added to the wreath for a more festive look. This is as charted, though the pictures show either red beads or French Knots. For ornaments, I love using beads. I am thinking of doing a very simple padded ornament finish with a beaded edge.

Here’s the full set of 8. These are going to be so cute for the animal lovers out there. I have never seen a beaver on an ornament before, and I have been collecting these for many years! I will be stitching this little set at least once more, but on different fabrics and with different finishes. Both sets will be available soon. I think animals are a refreshing change from the traditional Santa, angel, snowman, and gingerbread ornaments.

This next week will be a busy one, and I am not sure how much real stitching time I will get. Small projects like these are great ways to handle busy weeks because you do get to finish them quickly. Watch the Facebook page for updates!!

Until next week, Happy Stitching!

The Fuss about Handmade

So, what’s all this fuss? Why is everyone all worked up over handmade these days? Why should you care?

If you love going to the craft shows and seeing all the unique handmade treasures, you have probably noticed more and more manufactured items being offered. Some shows have stopped being craft shows all together. Artisans and crafters do the shows to offer their creations to the public at reasonable prices. We can’t afford to have a full time shop with staff for a hobby. We can afford to rent a space or table and spend time getting to know the public.

Handmade means someone (a human) created the design and had a direct hand in completing it. With my items, I do all of the stitching myself. I do some of the design work as well. I do all of the finishing. My husband does help with the photography. But, I do 90% of the process by myself. It is handmade. Where it stops being handmade is if I engage a factory to mass-produce my designs and represent them as being my own work. Or farm them out to a village of needleworkers and pay them pennies per item. If my husband creates furniture, it is his hands at the machines, his hands applying the coats of finish and not some employee or subcontractor in a factory somewhere else.

The internet has been a blessing for so many creative people. For many years, the only option to us was to list our goods on eBay and hope someone bid on them. The listing fees were reasonable and payment could be made through PayPal. It was better than nothing, but not much. We could also build our own site and then hope that someone found us.

Enter the marketplace sites. The biggest and best known is Etsy. Why? It focused on handmade items as well as allowing vintage goods and craft supplies. You could find all kinds of wonderful items there, most of it with that unique flavor. I have a shop on there for my finished magnets and ornaments and I help with another shop that sells stitching supplies.

At the beginning of October 2013, Etsy rocked our world and announced they would start accepting manufactured goods. Yep. This now means that people like me can go out and hire others to do the work for me and still call it handmade. Really? They are now allowing us to apply for approval. The very first one approved doesn’t make his bags at all – a factory in a different state does. Should he be competing with all of the sellers who do create fantastic bags by themselves in the same marketplace? I don’t think so. His items are nice… but they are now mass produced. You are not getting a one of a kind item. You are getting a quality item from a small business.

So, one very clever, driven lady decided to do something positive about this. Stacey Sobelman of SMARTdesigns by Stacey created the logo you see above and put the word out to other pure handcrafted sellers. In just two short weeks, over 400 have joined her team from all over the world. We proudly display her graphic to help visitors find the unique, one of a kind items they have come to expect from Etsy. If you see a shop using this graphic, it means they make everything they sell. It makes shopping for handmade even easier!!

Shop Handmade

I think this is more important this year, more than ever before especially when you consider the state of the global economy. It isn’t as hard as you think and you will save time, energy, and gas by thinking ahead a bit and this is the perfect time of year to do it. So very many have lost their jobs (and hope) and have turned to alternative means of earning a living.

Here are just a few ideas for you….

Everyone has services they need. Buy gift certificates for oil changes, haircuts, and meals from your favorite local establishments. Hire a cleaning lady for a day to help your mom or grandmother. Have her lawn cut while you are at it.
Just about every single town has a local art gallery or shop where artisans in the area sell their work. Why buy copycat when you can have a real original, handmade, unique item?
If you don’t have one in your area, don’t fret. You have a HUGE online arts and crafts community in Etsy. You can easily find everything from vintage to downloadable patterns to craft supplies. Folksy in the UK is also great and iCraft in Canada sells only reviewed handmade items.

If you have been following this site for any length of time, you know that I actively sell on Etsy and Storenvy. I do highly recommend shopping on such sites for two huge reasons. First, you can use Paypal to make your purchase. This means your precious credit card numbers are never revealed to anyone. You do have Paypal watching over the transaction. If you don’t receive your items, you can get your money back by simply filing a complaint. Second, you have the site itself. Etsy is very proud of its customer service and fulfillment. Items listed are supposed to be accurately pictured and described or you can get your money back. It’s a double layer of protection that you don’t usually get shopping in a box store.

One other consideration – a good number of the sellers on Etsy do custom work for either no additional charge or very reasonable fees. You can easily afford to give something custom designed to everyone on your list, have it delivered to your door securely, and pay less money than you would fighting the crowds in your local mall.

Think about it.. shop handmade – support handmade!

A Start

There is just something so very exciting about taking the first few stitches in a new project. I do a LOT of smaller pieces for magnets and ornaments so it should not be a big deal.. but it is. I have two larger designs I have promised to do for a request quilt. Both are due next year, but… I don’t want to wait and it is their day today.

The challenge is to find a superhero chart that will be between 4 x4 and 9×9 inches when complete. The young recipient happens to like Superman. This chart popped into mind immediately when I signed up for the project. No, it will not be on black.

Today happens to be our 2nd wedding anniversary (Love you, Baby!) and we went to the neighboring town of Rauma. The local yarn shop carries some DMC colors and I wanted to be sure I had fresh skeins for the blue and red parts. Kajava doesn’t carry either blue called for on this chart!!! It is okay. I have a backup plan in place. I have a shop here in Eura that does carry Anchor and she has most colors. I do have full skeins of all the colors on hand, so I am good to go.

Get the fabric out, make sure it is the right type and size to meet the guidelines for this project. Seal the edges of the fabric with Fray Check because I don’t have a sewing machine yet… find the center.. yes, the very very center. Now, count carefully to your starting point. Mark it.. count it again. Start your thread and breathe…. it’s on its way. I’m now about an hour into this one…

This is the left side of the neck (as you look at the chart). The reds tend to fuzz a bit, so they will be the last color to go in if at all possible. I did want to stop and share the excitement of the first few stitches with you though….

I did complete the chart and file for the Finnish Tonttu from yesterday’s post. It is now listed on my Etsy Shop and available for immediate download.

Thanks for stopping by… and until next time, Happy Stitching!

My Needle's Song – Neulani laulu

Category Archives: Orts