Emma Homent - Needlepoint: A Modern Stitch Directory: Over 100 creative stitches and techniques for tapestry embroidery

A MODERN STITCH DIRECTORY

EMMA HOMENT

www.davidandcharles.com

You may have tried cross stitch and you have probably seen some Bargello popping up in craft magazines, but did you know that these are just a couple of the huge range of needlepoint stitches out there? So harness your inner Bridgerton babe and get ready to feel totally Austen, as I introduce you to the glorious world of needlepoint.

For me, this journey started at the age of seven not that I realized it at the time. My lovely mum, an avid stitcher, bought me my first kits in a bid to keep a very bouncy girl calm and focused. I remember sitting in our living room, carefully concentrating on a design with three little kittens on it, a cute kit stitched in long satin stitches, perfect for a beginner like me to practise getting her stitch tension just right! From that point on I was hooked. No day trip was complete without searching out the local haberdashery store to try to find more cute and quirky designs to sew.

As the years went by, I found it harder and harder to find designs I liked. A chance meeting with an illustrator friend of mine gave me an idea, and after some inspiring chats with kit designer Emily Peacock, I wondered if maybe I could start some design collaborations to bring the kind of designs Id enjoy onto the market. After a few years of pondering this, and several crippling bouts of imposter syndrome, I finally launched my own kit company, The Makers Marks, in 2019.

My kits are a mix of collaborations that I seek out as well as ideas worked up from scratch, often with a touch of 1980s nostalgia, and candy colours and pastels predominate. Im a big fan of bringing bright, joyful colours into everything I do, including #stitchmondays, my weekly showcase of needlepoint stitches, which was really the starting point for this book. There are so many exciting stitches to explore and Im here to be their champion.

Always worked on an open weave, grid-like canvas, even needlepoints most decorative stitches are surprisingly easy to master. In this step-by-step guide, packed full of handy how to illustrations, beginners and expert stitchers alike will feel confident enough to give every stitch a go. Journey with me through Simple, Structured and Statement stitch sections to discover the incredible array of stitches you can choose from, more than 100 in all, from the ubiquitous tent stitch to the magnificent woven wheel!

As you learn your new favourite stitches, theres plenty of opportunity to try them out, with no less than ten projects to select from, each perfect for those relaxing weekend crafter-noons. Theres a cheery rainbow pen pot, dreamy cloud earrings, a starry night door hanger or a zingy zip pouch, and half a dozen more besides. Or you can simply select a set of stitches and make your own stitch sampler.

My hope is that you will take these stitches far beyond the pages of this book and start experimenting with them yourself, swapping them out for those in the kits you buy or the projects you make, to add your own spin to any needlepoint design you stitch.

Whether you are crazy for cross stitch or nutty for needlepoint, you are an embroidery enthusiast, because essentially everything is embroidery. Confused? Well, let me explain

Imagine an umbrella. At the cap at the top sits embroidery, a word that captures all stitches worked on any type of surface. Arcing down from the cap, on one side of the canopy is what we traditionally recognize as embroidery, the delicate little stitches worked on a tightly woven evenweave fabric, such as calico, cotton or linen. Arcing down on the other side of the canopy is needlepoint, often using similar stitches to those you find in embroidery, but this time worked on lovely open weave canvas. Forking off from the needlepoint curve (imagine them as the panels of your umbrella), youll find cross stitch and Bargello, needlepoint stitches striking out to do their own thing.

So, the material you decide to stitch on pretty much tells you which craft youre doing. Though lets be honest, crafting rules are there to be broken. If you can find anything with an even set of holes across it, youll find a crafter prepared to stitch it. Chain-link fences make for excellent stitch installations!

While the fabric you work your stitches on flags up the type of needlework you are doing, do the fibres you use threaded through your needle dictate the craft in the same way? Well, that used to be the case. Traditionally, needlepoint, or tapestry needlepoint as it was more commonly known across Europe, was stitched using wool. And, while most needlepoint kits still come packaged with wool to stitch your design in, these days any fibre can find its place on a needlepoint canvas even ribbon!

Needlepoint isnt a modern craft, by any means. While we can trace its roots back as far as the Ancient Egyptians, needlepoint really became a main player on the craft stage in the 16th century and has continued to have groundbreaking moments in every century since. The 17th century saw the rise of Bargello, named after the palace in Florence in which it was found adorning chairs. With the growing interest in and popularization of upholstered furniture, there was a big opportunity to add embellishment, and its in moments like these that different forms of embroidery find space to grow.

In the 18th century, needlepoint became a teaching tool, a way to hone so-called ladylike skills in young women and girls, and this was the golden age of the traditional sampler. The sampler was a way stitchers could show off different stitch techniques in a single piece of work, often incorporating alphabets and numerals as well as motifs personal to the stitcher. The earliest samplers that have been discovered are Peruvian, dating back as far as 200, and while they must have been stitched across the world from this point onwards, the majority that have survived are largely European and North American.

In the 19th century came the Industrial Revolution and with it the craft world saw the arrival of Berlin woolwork, a new style of needlework stitched in tent stitch to create bold, bright, colourful designs in multiple tones and shades, all made possible by new fibre-dyeing techniques often using chemical-based colourants. This is also when we start to see charted designs being created and shared, similar to the ones we use today, and this made needlepoint accessible and affordable for the masses. Berlin woolwork designers took inspiration from the paintings of the time, with many designs featuring florals, animals and birds, although geometric patterns did manage to creep in, too.