Work in Progress Wednesday - 29 Jan 2014

It's Wednesday again and here's the weekly update on my Tudor Lady piece.=)  Many will have seen the intermediate post on the Grow Your Blog Party post (which is two posts down, for anyone here looking for it), and on the left is where I finished working yesterday.

As you can see, I've finished the yellow, cheese-shaped section and made a start on the blue outer skirt part.  I'm trying to smooth off all the edges, both edge of the stitched part and also where one element of the dress meets another, to try to get rid of that horrid pixellated look.  Cross stitch can be really prone to that sort of thing and I try to smooth it out wherever I can.

Thanks to all who sent well wishes for my mum.  I told her that she'd had lots of people she didn't know sending her 'get well soon's etc!!  I don't know if she quite understood me, as she was really 'spacey' at the time with a bad infection and low food intake, but she's on the mend now.

Basically, she had a fall in the middle of the third night back at home and broke her hip.  They then had to wait a couple of extra days before being able to operate as she got a chest infection and ended up in the High Dependency Unit (one step down from Intensive Care).  Anyway, they got that treated sufficiently for her to be able to have her operation to bolt the hip back together yesterday morning and she's now in considerably less discomfort and the staff in the Unit are pleased with her progress.  I'm back home now that the worst is over and hope to travel up to visit again at the weekend, by which time I expect she'll probably be back on a regular ward and grumbling about being stuck in the Infirmary again!!LOL=)

So, thanks again to all who took a kind interest - things are going well.=)

And I now have quite a pile of ironing to catch up on amongst other domestic thrills, so that'll keep me out of trouble for the next couple of days.  What's new in your world??  And how are your stitching projects coming along?  Why not leave a link below and share your work with us all?  I'll visit each one and leave you a comment - promise!=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Needlequest Progress Post - 27 Jan 2014

Hi everyone!

I'm afraid I've nothing new to share with you today, just the same post as I included on the Grow Your Blog Party post (which is under this one, for anyone visiting from that event).  I'm hoping to get a little more of this one done later on today whilst sitting visiting my mum in hospital.  Poor girl didn't get long at home....=(

Can you do any better?  Have you anything to share with the rest of us this week?  If so, please leave your link (and/or any other comments) below.

Sorry for the brief post, not much time to spare today!  Hope to be back with a Work in Progress Wednesday post in two days' time.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Grow Your Blog Party Post - Welcome!

This event is being run by Vicki of 2 Bags Full and I hope at least some regular readers were able to join in and enter their blogs.  As a representative of the Craftsy team told me that they were rather short on embroidery blog entries to their Blogging Awards, it would be especially great to see what lesser known stitchcrafts blogs are out there waiting to be discovered!

Hi!  Welcome to Sew In Love. I'm a 42 year old (even though I look more like an overgrown 12 year old) textile hobbyist living on the southernmost tip of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England.  I'm originally from 30 miles north of here - from Leeds in West Yorkshire.  I've been married to Martin, whose originally from Germany for nearly 15 years.=)

I love to travel and have visited 19 countries to date, if you count England, Scotland and Wales as being separate countries, and I'd love to get to 30 or more some day.  Maps showing which countries those 19 are are on our travel blog, Brauns on Tour, (which needs updating) and one of my main dreams is to have the 'need' to increase its scope somewhat.  I've lived for a total of about two years in Taiwan and a couple of months in Germany as well as here in Yorkshire and have a passion for foreign languages, especially Mandarin Chinese, which I used to teach too.

You can find out a bit more about this blog on my About page (link above, under the header photos) and you'll have got some ideas from my header photos and those I've included here what I do on this blog.

On Mondays I try to post my weekly update from the Needlequest challenge which I run and which you're most welcome to join in.  Participants spend some time each month working on a certain design theme or embroidery technique.  Sign up on the challenge page here on blog.  This month we're all trying our hands at needle-painting, and next month is dedicated to Japan as a theme.  Here's my latest effort from the challenge.

Many Wednesdays find me posting to Sharon B's Work in Progress Wednesdays event.  It's not exactly a challenge, more of a Weight-Watchers weigh-in for stitchers where we can show off how far we've got with a long-term project, an unfinished/long neglected piece or something like that and I've completed three neglected pieces so far.  I even started my current WIPW project partly to be able to continue joining in and this is how far I've got.  I hope to enter the finished piece into the Sheffield Fayre in August this year. From this you can tell that I love a bit of cross stitch as well as the more complication forms of embroidery.  I like to include lots of variety in my stitching diet.

I don't just embroider, I also do some knitting here and there - although I do tend to embroider on my finished knits!  Here's a close-up of a baby cardy I knitted last summer.  It's a nice design in itself, but looks so much prettier with the flower buttons and stitched stems and buds.  I loved baby knits as I was able to learn so much doing them as well as complete so many pieces in a relatively short time.  Trouble is, I've run out of babies to knit for!!=)

Sometimes I post tutorials and things on other pieces I'm working on and have created a whole page of them for you to be able to find what you want most easily.  There's also a page dedicated to feature articles, such as the series I posted on Korean stitchery and costume recently.  I'll be starting a Reviews page and posts soon, on which I'll be posting about books (and a few kits here and there) that Mary Corbet hasn't covered on the Needle'n'Thread reviews page.

My style tends to lean towards the classic, but I have been known to do and enjoy some more contemporary pieces as well and may well even develop that later on - especially through the Needlequest challenge I mentioned above.

Other than that, here are some random facts about me:

* I'm vegetarian with serious vegan and raw foodist tendencies.
* I learned Mongolian for an academic year when I was at university.
* I'm verging on fanatical about things being straight!!  I can't bear curtains or bed quilts to be skew, table mats not to line up on the dining table or books on the shelves.
* I learnt the basics of playing the viola back in 2007-9, but never got very far.  Maybe one day...  My favourite viola piece is Galzunov's Elegy, which I can only dream of being able to play, other than via a CD!!
* I'm mad keen to see Liechtenstein and the other tiny states in Europe.
* I love colourful eye make-up, although I rarely get to use it much myself, and have a Pinterest board dedicated to rainbow looks.  (I also have a few needlework ones too....)
* I hate the words 'beverage', 'persons' and, most of all, 'purchase'.  What in heck's wrong with 'drink', 'people' and 'buy', huh?
* I have a Squidoo account and have created five lenses there.  I'd be grateful if you'd visit some of them, vote in the polls, leave comments and, if you have an account, Squidlike them, esp the one on healthy grocery shopping on a budget, because if they get no traffic and activity, they go back to WIP status and it's really annoying having to re-activate them every so often.=(  The others are on stumpwork embroidery, finishing up stalled craft projects, starting a needlecrafts blog and budget beauty shopping.  I'm planning some more on other embroidery styles such as thread painting, hardanger and goldwork.
* I am actively looking for shades L310, L739, L779 and LEcru in the DMC Linen Threads, which are now discontinued.  If you have some and are interested in parting with it, please leave a comment with contact details...=)  Ditto the chart for Anchor's 'Birds and Seasons' cross stitch picture.  I have all the materials, just need the chart!

I also have an art blog, Art Excursion, which I really need to do more posting on - and more art to post, but I suppose that type of art doesn't really hit the spot with me as embroidery and textiles do.  There's something deeply nurturing (to me) about textile arts, a feeling I don't get from the paper based variety, much as I admire and like them.  I think the reason for this could be that I'm not very good at them and haven't the patience to practice....!!

I find goals lists help me enormously in being productive and keeping my activities focused, so I maintain annual goals lists and here's the current one.  I'm a big list maker and get a real kick out of crossing things off them as they're done.=)  I don't like part-finished things hanging around or to work on too many pieces at once.  Ideally, I like two on the go at any given time so that I have a choice, but it doesn't get out of hand or mean that I never finish anything.

So, do stay for a couple of minutes more and have a look at some of my gallery pages (links just below the header photo series - most people seemed to like the Raised Embroidery and Stumpwork one best) and leave me a comment telling me about your work and where to find you.  I'm always on the look-out for more textiles and embroidery blogs, but I also sometimes follow others, so you just never know!

Many thanks for coming around to see me.  There are a number of ways you can subscribe, if you want to, other than by using the 'Follower' function, (which I don't think tells us very much after the demise of Google Reader), including the Bloglovin' service and e-mail updates that there are options to sign up for on my sidebar.  I have a dedicated page on Google+ and there's a sidebar widget to follow that too and that's more useful to blog readers than circling me.

Hope you'll call in again soon....

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Work in Progress Wednesday - 22 Jan 2014

It's Wednesday and time for an  update on my piece of cross stitch cheese, properly known as the yellow underdress skirt on my Tudor Lady piece.

The needle in this first photo is roughly at the level where I was last time so you can see that, although last week it looked like I was almost at the end of this section, there was still as much again to go!  The darker yellow section is now complete though, so this shows the limit of this bit.

On these two shots you can also see where the ornaments the lady is holding in her hands will fit in.

Hopefully, I should finish this bit off later this week, so I should be able to move on to some of the blue of the overdress skirt.  As Wendy rightly said a couple of weeks ago, some of the design is a bit 'pixelly' which is a surprise as it's an advanced design with metallics, beading, petit point, satin stitch and half stitches, so adding in a few quarter and three-quarter fractionals would hardly have put people off.  Anyway, I'll be adding them myself soon to neaten it up.  I do so hate the boxey and over-pixelly look of some otherwise lovely cross stitch designs.=(

This project is part of the Work in Progress Wednesdays 'show and tell' type challenge, run by Sharon B on Pintangle.  I'd be mildly amazed if you've never heard of this blog, but some may not have and might be interested in hopping over there and seeing if they have a piece they can join in with.  WIPW is almost like a weekly Weight Watchers' weigh in for stitchers.  It provides a weekly appointment to share what progress we've made on a stitching project, especially a large or long-neglected one.  This is the fifth project I've worked on for WIPW and it was a great help in completing three of the other four and getting some work done on the fourth, which I may eventually get around to doing some more of, but I don't promise!!  Perhaps I do need one persistent WISP/UFO to humanise me, LOL!!=)

Anyway, so far this piece looks quite ridiculous, (as early stage cross stitches often do), but I hope it'll pad out into something a bit more recognisable within the next month.

This Saturday is the Grow Your Blog Party so, if you're signed up to take part, don't forget to create your posting and get it live before you go to bed on Friday so that when those of us who've volunteered to go around and check for party posts etc visit on Saturday morning, we'll see it!=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Needlequest Progress Post - Mon 20 Jan 2014

It's Monday again and time to share what little I've managed to do on the Needlequest piece this week.  The main reason for the lack of really impressive progress is that I was out of action for a good few days and I can't stitch when horizontal in bed!!  Sadly...=(

One of the challenge members said last week that she was impressed at how much I had been able to do up to that point.  Well, it might help to know that we have a small and simple home, no kids or pets and I work one morning every two months.  Thanks to that, I can probably stitch more than many can.

As you can see, I haven't really got very far on with this piece.  What you're seeing here is each day's work from Saturday at the top, Sunday above and what I've just finished off this morning below.

I wanted to get the outlines all worked as quickly as possible as they aren't easy to see.  You would think that they would be, the fabric being, basically, dark brown.  However, as you can just make out at the left hand side of the second photo by the hoop part, the fabric is actually shot silk, so the white marks show beautifully against the dark brown threads, but very poorly against the light tan ones.  Depending on how the light is hitting the fabric I could either see the lines quite clearly or not at all!!=)  Now I have a nice stitched outline.  As you can see under the bottom leaf, I also have a nasty mark....=(  I think something got dropped on it, but it should wash out when the piece is finished.

What about you?  Have you managed to get anything done/posted over the last week?  If you have, please leave a comment with a link on this post.  If you leave it on any other post or page it'll get missed by anyone wanting to see others' work and that would be a shame.  However, If you'd like to sign up to join in, then leave a comment on the challenge home page, and I'll gladly add you to the list.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

'Sunshine and Flowers' Sampler Framed!

And here it is, back from the professional framer's, complete with two mounts and a nice wooden finish frame.  It cost me £43 to have this done and would have been a bit more had I not prepared and laced it up myself.  Up close, it would've been better to have used an off-white board to lace it around, as the pure white is a little too stark, but it doesn't show too much - and I daresay next to no-one will even notice it at all.  Just my perfectionism again.=)

Actually, I collected it a good week ago, but I didn't manage to get a photo even as good as this one (and it isn't the best, I know....) for a few days.

As I type, it's in mum's room in a care home near Leeds ready to be taken back with her to her house on Monday.=)  Glad to both see this project come to final fruition (as well as to see that mum liked it!) and to get mum out of residential homes and back into her own.

I realised that I also haven't shown you the completed Lizzie*Kate 'Autumn' button-up piece and that the last update was 'at about 85%'.  Just need to re-press it and then I can share it with you.  In the meantime, here's hoping I can get something done on my second needle painting piece as I've been out of action the past few days.

Have a good weekend!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Work in Progress Wednesday - 15 Jan 2014

Here's a quick update on the Tudor Lady cross stitch.

Not much to show you today, I'm sorry to say, but I've been working more on the needle painting of late than the cross stitch and that's meant that I've only got as far as almost filling in the wedge that I'd 'outlined' in the darker shade last time.

So, here it is, looking even more like holey cheese than ever!!

More next week, I hope!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Needlequest Progress Post - Mon 13 Jan 2014

So, how are you getting along with your Needlequest piece(s)?   I've been really enjoying it so far and have managed to complete my first little flower and make a start on the preparations needed for the second one.

Let me walk you through each day's work.  Come and see....

I'm quite pleased with it, although there are one or two things to bear in mind for next time.  For one, the petal outlines are a bit more jagged than I would like in places, so I need to concentrate more on getting those straight.  Second, this flower is really too pale.  It would have been better to have used the very pale peach colour as the lightest shade, rather than white.  The bud looks overly coloured in comparison.  Also, the fabric was too thin to totally avoid puckering.  It isn't too bad, but it is there - and not really wanted!!

On the whole though, I'm satisfied with it (and there's nothing wrong with striving for perfection, before anyone tells me off for being 'too hard on myself'!!!LOL!!)

Here's the second piece.  First up is the photo from the book:

These next two shots are me trying out the threads against five different shades of brown silk (some of them would have worked well with the peach rose too), and then the threads laid out on the chosen piece.

Above here is the silk cut and backed with iron-on interfacing.  I often use this as I find it's easier to keep the whole thing in line than using a backing fabric.  I've never managed to get the two layers completely flush, but that's never a problem with interfacing - unless, of course, you get a crease in one of the fabrics!!  I used a thick piece of baking paper on the ironing board to stop the extra part of the interfacing from sticking to the ironing board cover fabric.  The silk itself will be very slightly too small for the hoop, so an excess of backing was needed.  I didn't want to use any more silk than necessary as it's not cheap and the strip that would have been left wouldn't have been much use for anything else.

Below is the outline traced onto the fabric.  It's not so easy to see in some lights, and in others it's perfectly clear!  Might be a bit of a challenge to work, but we'll see.=)

So, that's how I'm getting on.  How about you?  What have you got to share for this week?  Anything?  Please leave a link to anything you'd like to show us in the comments section and please also remember to link back here on your post if you can.  Of course, you don't have to be a Needlequester to comment - all are welcome!!=)

If you'd like to join in the Needlequest, full details are on the challenge page.  Feel free to sign up anytime!

PS.  A note for Deborah from South Africa re. the needle painted dog on the technique intro page.  That piece came from the Royal School of Needlework's book and wasn't a Helen M Stevens' design at all.  In fact, had she worked it, I doubt she would have used more than two or three different shades as she uses that glorious floss silk which reflects the light so well you can get away with few shades, or even just one!  She's great at directional stitching though, you're right, but this one was pure RSN and the original was worked by Tracy Franklin, one of the School's graduates and now a professional embroiderer and teacher.=)  She also keeps a blog.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Stumpwork ladybird picture re-work

This one took a lot more time than I'd expected and threw up one or two more challenges than I'd thought it would as well.

The first challenge, really, was colour choice.  It's at times like this when you realise just how much difference there truly is between the DMC and Anchor colour ranges.  The original kit was worked in the DMC threads that came with it, but my re-work was in the Anchor threads that I normally use.  The greens were totally different - there wasn't even a close match for one of them, and one of the purplish reds was also missing from the Anchor collection.  Of course, the other way around will be true as well - certain Anchor shades won't be available in the DMC range.  I even considered starting a DMC thread collection, but not for long.  I have nowhere to store a second range of stranded cottons, I don't have the needed £300-400 to buy it and, frankly, I'm not a specialist.  If I were someone like Trish Burr, I would consider it a professional necessity, but as I'm just little ol' me, I'll have to make do.

Anyway, I made the mistake of trying to match the colours too much to the originals and less to each other, so I'm not sure how I like the results at times!!

Here, although the contrast is not good in photography, you might be able to see that I cut the lightest shade out of the blackberries.  I thought about real berries and felt that the shade I'd matched up from the old piece really didn't occur.  As for the darkness of some of the pictures here, the lack of daylight is partly to blame - it didn't seem to get fully light enough to take good shots for days on end!

Above is the almost finished piece before I stitched the wings, and below you can see why you should avoid stitching detached elements on just plain old white/cream fabric unless the edges are to be that sort of colour.  Match up wherever you can!  It's not so bad when the edging is buttonhole, but just plain overcasting almost always leaves one with this problem:

I really hate seeing those white edges and so I seriously considered re-stitching the wings onto red fabric, but decided that, before I started that, I'd see if I could rescue the situation with a good, red pen.

As you can see, it worked and, after giving the wings enough time for the ink to dry thoroughly (you don't want red smears on your background fabric!), I attached them in the usual way and here's the end result:

Here he is again, from a different angle and with the back two sets of legs re-stitched as the first attempt was rather too short!

So, that's it for the old DMC stumpwork designs.  There was a sixth one, but I never bought it as I didn't really like the design.  The next step is to stretch them all onto those cardboard squares I showed you a couple of weeks ago and then find some way of displaying them.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Work in Progress Wednesday - 8 Jan 2014

Is this a first, Sharon?  Is this the first time someone started a project with a view to staying in the Work in Progress Wednesdays loop, rather than using it to finish stalled stuff??=)

OK, I did want to do this one anyway as I needed a suitably impressive cross stitch piece to help me stand a chance of a prize in the 2014 Sheffield Fayre in late August and I've always wanted to do this piece (and another in the series, which I may work for the 2015 Fayre, who knows?).  Be that as it may, I love the motivation of having something to show in the WIPW line up, even though I don't suppose there'll be an official WIPW post to check in on for another week or so, but so this is what you'll be seeing most Wednesdays for the next few months.

Yes, I decided to work the light brown fur parts as if they were a rich red velvet (even if that isn't in keeping with the costume of the period!!) and I also plan to smoothen up the outlines, esp. of the skirt.

Here's the floss toss for the piece:

Above is the very first bit of the stitching!  The centre of the design is in the upper section of the skirt of the yellow underdress.   The photo below shows the state of play on 5 January with the stitches having reached up to the top of the yellow section and begun the descent of the right hand side.  There's also some of the lighter shade inserted.

Below is the very latest shot.  As you can see, I may be working on the yellow section for a few weeks yet.  Added to that, we're looking at a long term project that the magazine says will take three months to stitch and I'm assuming that means if the stitcher didn't have other projects on the go as well, so you can probably double that time for me as I'll be doing plenty of other pieces too with Needlequest.

Looks like I'm stitching a piece of Swiss cheese, doesn't it??=)  Cross stitch Emmenthal!!

Hope you've enjoyed the beginnings of this picture.  I'm enjoying stitching it, even though I've already had to re-stitch two bits...!!  (Teach me to stitch when I can't sleep....)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Needlequest Progress Post - 6 January 2014

Welcome to the very first Needlequest Progress Post!  Participants, please leave a comment with a link to where we can see how you're getting on with the challenge.  Non-participants, please leave a comment to cheer us all on.=)

I'm sorry to say that, owing to being horribly busy and tired over the weekend as well as trying to get my stumpwork ladybird finished, I haven't got any further than this with my first first floral project.  However, that took less than half an hour (I spent an hour stitching and worked on three projects), so there's still hope!!=)  I plan to finish this one before the next update.

Something I have spent some time and energy doing though (albeit before the challenge actually started) is fishing out all the smooth silk fabrics I owned to be washed and pressed up ready for use.  I feel they need this as otherwise, smooth silk can feel frankly like paper.  When I was carrying the pieces in one hand from my own room to the ironing board for this photo, they were stiff enough to be horizontal!  Here are most of them before treatment:

Two of the fat quarters, the light bronze and the turquoise shot with white, that I bought at the Harrogate Show drying off on the airers:

I rinsed the pieces through in cool water and Ecover's delicate fabric liquid which removed a few manufacturing smells, then left them to soak in some nice fabric conditioner/softener for a while.  After rinsing them thoroughly, but gently, I then squeezed them out by laying them on a thick towel one by one and rolling it up.  By the time I unrolled it, the piece was almost dry and not too badly screwed up.  I then steam ironed them whilst still damp and used extra water directly on the piece of fabric to at least try to remove some stubborn packing creases.  Some came out, some are still somewhat visible and I'll need to cut along those lines and avoid having them in the middle of an embroidery!

Here's the whole collection, which I keep rolled up and wrapped in brown paper to protect it and keep it clean.  As you can see, I have quite a log of pieces that are suitable to use and I've realised that I really don't need to buy any more.  Drat!!! LOL!

So, what have you been doing during the first five days of the challenge?  And what are your plans for the next week?  I hope to finish my peach rose and get the second piece chosen and prepared.

Please leave a comment with your link and on your own posting, please do leave a link to either this post or the main challenge page so that your readers can find out more and join in too, if they want to.  We now have 11 joining in so far and more are always welcome.  So, if anyone's still toying with the idea, feel free to sign up any time you like.  There's a list of the participants so far on the challenge page, complete with links to their blogs etc.  Take a look!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Needlequest 2014 - January - technique - Needle Painting

It's time to start the Needlequest!  I've been looking forward to this for many weeks and here we are, all set to go.=)

The first theme for this first month is: Needle painting.  Also known as thread painting, silk shading, opus plumarium (by Helen M Stevens) and even soft shading, as well as long and short stitch.  Needle painting refers to the method of embroidering so that the finished piece looks quite realistic, as if it were painted.

The first name that comes to mind in the needle painting field won't be a surprise to any of you and that's, of course, Trish Burr.  I have the pleasure of owning four of her five needle painting books, any of which provide enormous amounts of inspiration and make you want to run for a needle and begin at once!  My plans for this month of the challenge are from her 'beginners' book:

I started and muffed the red rose you can see in the upper right hand corner during December, but this month I'm hoping to do the other two florals you can see on the cover and the lovely yellow Welsh Poppy piece as seen below.  I'll be using the glorious silk fabrics I bought from The Silk Route's stall at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show as backgrounds - the pansies on the off-white shade, the dog rose on blue and the poppy on the brown shade, I think.  (First though, I want to have a go at the peach and white version of the simpler rose piece on some ordinary cotton.)

What I love about The Silk Route's silk fabric is that it's so much smoother than many silks one can buy and so works better for this kind of embroidery, in my opinion.  There are still some slubs at times, but they seem to me to be both smaller and fewer than most of the 'rougher' dupions I've seen and bought.

Of course, you can work needle painting onto more or less any closeweave/plainweave fabric and the choice is yours as to which you use for your own work.  I just like to have the gentle sheen of silk as a background and am hoping, in the fullness of time and when I've worked enough pieces, to create a display of several florals, birds and maybe butterflies too in one large frame.  We shall see....

There are a few other books you might find helpful if you're wanting to learn needle painting skills this month:

* Long and Short Stitch Embroidery, Trish Burr
* Redouté's Finest Flowers in Embroidery, Trish Burr
* Crewel and Surface Embroidery, Trish Burr
* The A-Z of Thread Painting, Country Bumpkin (eds) (from which the floral above was worked)
* Beginners' Guide to Silk Shading, Clare Hanham
* RSN Stitch Guide - Silk Shading, Sarah Homfray

All of the above are reviewed on Needle'n'Thread and can be accessed, along with some tutorials and worked examples on Mary's Needlepainting page.  You or a friend may already have one or more of these, or you might find them in your local library, so it's worth checking what you can borrow before investing in lots of new books!

In case anyone's especially interested in investing in the Trish Burr 'Beginners' book, then here are a couple more pages so that you can see just how much detail the instruction pages go into:

As you can see, they're excellent (although my photography was not!)

Sarah Homfray has posted a short video tute on YouTube giving a simple overview of working long and short stitch, and she shows the progress of a complete floral portrait from original drawing to completed embroidery here on this video.

Perhaps you might like to try one of Tanja Berlin's kits?  Or one from Trish Burr?  There are many other, less specialised kits that companies like DMC and Anchor offer, which can also fall into the needle painting category depending on how they're worked, or you might just want to try a design you've seen elsewhere, in a stitchcraft magazine or something similar.

Certainly not to be overlooked in this area is Helen M Stevens' work.  I own all but one or two of her books and, whilst she doesn't use the plethora of colours to create the shading that Trish Burr and others do, the fact that she uses silk floss does quite a lot of the shading for her, given that the light seems to create so many extra tones within each shade.  The butterfly on the right was stitched from one of her designs and, even here in stranded silk (Madeira's), there seem to be at least two blues used.  In floss silk, there seemed to be several!  Silk thread is more challenging to work with, but the resulting sheen is quite worth it!

Feel free to share links to your plans and your progress below and also do share any links you have found to good on-line tutorials, whether video or photo based.  The more the better and I haven't been able to find as many as I would have liked as so many that came up in my Google search were for machine based work (which you're welcome to do as your needle painting work if that's your interest!).

This dog portrait was worked from the RSN's Embroidery Techniques book, which also has a section on silk shading/needle painting.  I don't plan on doing anything this ambitious again in a hurry, (if ever!  The monotony of the colours was hard for me to bear...), but it just shows what a determined beginner can accomplish.  So, if you have lots of confidence, feel free to attempt something advanced!

I'm planning to post my weekly challenge work updates on Mondays, so I'll be bringing you all up to speed on how my own needle painting work is progressing on 6 Jan.

Don't forget, there's still time to join in the Needlequest challenge.  In fact, you can sign up absolutely any time.  Details and sign up comments are on the Needlequest page.  Any questions, please feel free to ask!

Good hunting!

(PS All photos, other than those of the Trish B book, decorating this page are my own work in previous years.)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014