Fiber Talk

Counted-canvas needlepoint is this week’s technique and we got to talk about it with Kathy Rees, one of the best designers in that world. Kathy earned a business degree, got tired of the corporate world, worked with her parents in their needlework shop, then owned her own shop. When that era came to an end, she committed herself to full-time designing and teaching. One of her signature series is...

It’s Midweek Chat time. This week we started out with the planned topics and were doing well until the subject of “Land of the Free” by Kathy Rees came up. That led to her new Shining Needle Society class, then we remembered Color Waves, and then it was all over. We simply went to needledelights.com and gushed and remembered all of the great designs. The spending of money will happen in the next...

Our guest this week is Ruth Cartwright of Craft with Cartwright. The show is sponsored by the Embroiderer’s Guild of America at egausa.org. In our conversation, we learn about Ruth’s business, her Friday free designs, and her 2026 365 Days of Crafting challenge. Our main focus is discussing topics Ruth has posted on her Instagram account. Among those are copyright infringement, granny crafts, why...

Kate Cross, of Bespoke Embroidery, joins us this week. Kate is a lifelong artist who connected with textile art when her grandmother suggested she visit an exhibition at the Royal School of Needlework. That led to studying and graduating from the RSN and she now teaches students and future tutors for the school. In addition, she has her own Bespoke Embroidery business. That involves design work...

Our long Holiday Hiatus is finally over and we’re back to our regular schedule. This week we talk about our upcoming needlepoint series (send us questions and things you want us to cover), a cool hand massager Beth got for Christmas (enabling alert), our stitching plans for the coming year, what we’re stitching for our needlepoint series, and we gush over Christmas cards Cindy Russell sent us. We...

Our topic this week is needle art, our artist is Fleur Woods, and our sponsor is Avlea Folk Embroidery (avleafolkembroidery.com). Fleur started her career in the corporate arena to “see how the world works.” It worked by suppressing her creativity. She left the 9-to-5 world and dabbled in various art media as she tried to find what it was that allowed her to express what was in her mind. A...

We’re joined this week by brilliant counted-canvas artist Wendy Moore. The show is made possible by CyberPointers (cyberpointers.org), the online chapter of ANG. The need to be creative transported Wendy from the science world to stage costume design. She moved to the Midwest and was exploring her love of Shakespeare when she was invited to an EGA meeting. That meeting opened the door to the...

For our final Wednesday conversation, we decided to do a recap of 2025 by naming our favorite needlework artist(s) of the year, the top item in the list of things we learned from 141 shows, and the one topic that stuck with us. We all had the same #1 artist, but Cindy and Gary had to go with our 1a selections because Beth was too fast with the keyboard. If you have a favorite needleworker...