the.com/needlepoint
meditation disguised as embroidery, where grandmothers quietly thread thousands of stitches into something nobody asked for
means A form of decorative embroidery in which yarn is stitched through the open holes of a stiff canvas mesh to create a dense, fully covered design.
from A transparent English compound of "needle" and "point" — the "needle" being the Old English nǣdl (a cousin of German Nadel), and "point" coming through Old French from Latin punctum, "a pricked spot." The word literally names the place where the needle pierces: the point of the stitch. It echoes the older lacemaking term "needlepoint lace," worked entirely with a needle rather than bobbins, before settling onto the canvas-and-yarn craft we picture today.
- ancient craft
- Egyptian tombs held needlepoint dating back thousands of years
- war effort
- WWI soldiers stitched to recover from shell shock
- royal hobby
- Mary, Queen of Scots, stitched through her imprisonment
- counted threads
- worked stitch-by-stitch over an open canvas grid
- not knitting
- uses canvas and yarn, no needles clacking together
petit point — fine embroidery technique using small diagonal stitches on canvas, popular in 17th century europe
gros point — larger-scale needlepoint stitch covering more canvas per stitch than petit point
bargello needlepoint — flame stitch pattern created with vertical straight stitches in graduated colors, originated in florence