Needlepoint Pillows -- The Internet is Wonderful!

When I was young and first married,

we lived in the city

We had one car

I rode the bus to work

That 45 minutes, I decided, would be a good time to do handwork.

I had read Mary Martin's Needlepoint book

And I became enamored with needlepoint

That, would be my handwork.

I bought a canvas -- the center was already filled in

And you just did the background

I still have it!

It's a sweet little pillow and I still adore it!

And over the years, I got braver and went from just filling in background

to actually doing all of the pillow:

Geraniums

Fish

(A charted design rather than a painted one)

And then I became a Mom and life got in the way.

I put away my needlepoint

Only to resurface in 2011 when we took our first transatlantic cruise

before we spent that Spring in England

I bought a canvas and thread

and stitched my way across the ocean and around England

It's still a favorite pillow

And so my stitching began . . . 

Husband Jim gifted me with this canvas one Christmas

I finished the round pillow before we headed home and I bought this one in England

 Shamlessly, the Oriental pillow was a flea market find

But the magnolias was not

And I learned on that transatlantic cruise from the British travelers

that I was doing a tapestry cushion

rather than a needlepoint pillow!

A friend gave me a box of her needlepoint --

In it was this partially done cushion

A adored it

And it came with thread

Thread still in it's wrapper!

However, there wasn't a lot of background wool.

I figured if I could get around the outside of the cushion, then I could

use a similar but different color for the middle section.

But as I stitched, I found that I didn't even have enough for the outside . . . 

What a bummer!

Then I checked on Etsy

I had the color number and the brand

A simple search of DMC Tapestry Wool No. 7925

There was a whole box!

For $5!

I bought it and hoped that the color was close

(you know that anything (fabric, thread, tapestry wool, wallpaper) not from the same

dye lot is not always a good thing!

But this one worked!!!

You can't tell them apart!

How great is that!

So now I'm madly stitching away at my latest tapestry cushion!