My passion for needlepoint has taken me in many directions. There are times when I have even made needlepoint creations without a pattern! This is an example of me using a pattern, but with my OWN interpretation.
The young man pictured here is my ex-boyfriend.
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| This is Dave. |
Labels are of course a limited view of any human being, but perhaps this label serves a purpose. Let’s call said boyfriend, “Dave”. When we were still an item, I wished to create an image of Dave that is particular to my artistry. Funny enough, the picture that I believed to be the most stunning and beautiful of Dave was a selfie he took just for me, of him trying on a suit for a wedding. This is when I also thought to look for selfies of myself, as sort of a “couples portraits” endeavor. When we broke up around a month after I started this project, I decided that I would finish both portraits because the idea was born and I felt I had to bring it to its fruition. Not that it matters, but Dave is fine with this.
I consider myself an experienced needlepoint artist, but it is quite a feat to replicate a photograph in needlepoint form without a computer-generated pattern. For such a pattern, I used the website pic2pat. I used this website before for the portrait of my mother, and even for my portrait of Beyoncé, but did not actually use the intended pattern.
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| Needlepoint portrait of my Mommy. |
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| Needlepoint portrait of Beyoncé. |
I simply referenced the created color image, and painstakingly stitched each tiny color that I could see.
This time around, I decided that the image would be easier to accomplish and more complete, if I actually followed the given template! Pic2pat gives one the option to basically decide how large and detailed to make the entire pattern. As you can imagine, the more detailed the pattern, the more closely it resembles the original image. Though this means a larger pattern, and takes more time to complete. The final pattern that I decided on was something of a compromise between the size of the pattern and how much time I was willing to spend on it!
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| First portrait still coming together... |
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| First portrait is finally on my wall! |
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| Hey Look! It’s me and me! |
Now when I said that I used my OWN interpretation, I am referring to the type of pattern I am using. The website pic2pat is for cross-stitch patterns. A pattern for needlepoint on plastic canvas is really no different, so this is not a problem. My only concern was using a mesh with smaller holes so that my finished creation was not HUMONGOUS! So rather than my usual 7-mesh, I went with a 10-mesh.
Now, this pattern is large enough that I had to use several pieces of mesh in total, to stitch together into the full image. Lucky for me, I suppose, both of these finished portraits are the exact same size.
Here are some sample images of a pattern generated by the website. Again this is NOT a pattern from the portraits that I talked about, but from a different project.
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| To make my yarn colors easy to remember, I made a separate chart with the EXACT yarn color taped to each symbol. |
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| This is the order that each “pattern page” must be connected to form the entire image. |
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| Just look at all those symbols! On a pattern, I have to keep up with every single one, consistently. |
