a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate
(William Morrow, New York)
Among the countless sources that can be used to create needlepoint designs, weaving patterns are especially appropriate. Basic needlepoint stitches laid on the warp and woof of needlepoint canvas logically follow the structure of woven designs--and, in the area of weaving alone, the design material is unbelievably rich.
Sally Nicoletti has selected the patterns for Weaving Designs for Needlepoint from many sources, including museum textiles, and from many nations and periods--from Japan, to Central Europe, to Africa; from Inca, to Early American, to modern Scandinavian. So pervasive is the art of weaving that no civilization has been without its own tradition of woven design.
The great advantage of needlepoint for culling this wealth of ancient and modern material is that the one, relatively easy technique of canvas stitchery can be used, rather than the many, sometimes very complex methods of weaving on different types of looms. A Peruvian, Welsh, or Venetian design can be rendered on a conveniently portable piece of canvas with little change of technique from one design to the next. The only special requirement is an accurate graph of the pattern, which is what this book provides--close to 60 patterns suggested for 63 specific projects such as pillows, upholstery, racket covers, bags and totes, glass cases, rugs, and wall hangings. But each pattern is, of course, adaptable also to other projects of your own choosing.
Because the designs are so various, they are also of varying degrees of difficulty--some excellent for beginners, most in the intermediate range, and some definitely demanding. For every design, in addition to the graph, a photograph of the finished project in black and white and another in full color are provided, plus directions and a yarn color list. Happily today needlepoint yarn is available in a tremendous range of colors; the colors of original textiles--from the brilliantly multicolored to the muted and subtle--can all be closely approximated.
Though Weaving Designs for Needlepoint is intended as a workbook from which to copy the designs, the carefully drawn graphs can also be studied to work out your own method of making graphs of any other woven designs you might like to translate into needlepoint. If you teach yourself to do this from the examples in the book, the possibilities of using weaving designs for needlepoint are endless.
Sally Nicoletti is a painter and first began designing needlepoint when she was in art school. Her designs have been published in Women's Day, Family Circle, The Ladies' Home Journal, and McCall's.
Weaving Designs for Needlepoint contains 32 color plates, 80 photographs and graphs for 63 projects.
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