I am taking orders on an intermittent basis as I have a neurological issue that requires me to rest for a few days between processing orders. There is a pop-up notification on the shopping cart page which will let you know if I am currently taking orders or when I will be next taking orders.

I will mail your order within 1 – 5 business days of receiving your order, depending on how many orders I am processing when you place your order or if I need to make a kit for your order of if I have to assemble a lot of items for your order.

Once your order is being processed and once it has been shipped you will receive an email from my website to let you know, please check your junk/spam mail if you have not received the emails.

Air mail letter, parcel and tracked mail to the USA are taking 2 – 4 weeks to arrive. I recommend tracked or expedited mail for a faster service.  Letter mail and air mail parcel services do not come with a tracking number.

Air mail international is taking 2 – 8 weeks depending on location.

Mail across Canada is taking 1 – 3 weeks depending on location.

Thanks for reading.

Best wishes,

Tanja and the fluffies.

Beppy Berlin is my mother who greatly inspired me to stitch and to become a designer.

Mum loved trying out lots of needlework techniques and was a part time teacher for over 50 years. She stitched small designs and enjoyed showing others how to stitch, she inspired people and made many friends through teaching needlework.

This gallery shows the needlework pieces that mum has stitched over the last 50 years. She has stitched well over 300 pieces and she kept the pieces that she stitched so we have the pleasure of enjoying them, but we are looking for homes for some of her beautiful needlework as we don’t have room to display them all ? and it is a shame that they sit in storage and not be enjoyed.

I will be adding more pictures to the gallery as I have time, Tanja

Beppy Berlin Needlework Gallery

Sadly my dad passed away on January 20th 2023 at the age of 82. His family was with him on his final days and he had a peaceful death. Dad lived a long and happy life with my mum, Beppy Berlin.

Paul Julian Berlin 1940 – 2023
Photo from their last visit to Canada.

Before Dad got sick my Dad was caring for my mum.
Mum has dementia and my sister and I have been lucky enough to find a very caring home that will support her needs.

Mum has been an avid stitcher and tutor of needlework for 50 years in the south of England and I plan to do an exhibition of her work when I go back to the UK for a visit and set up a gallery of her needlework on my website.

Tanja

Chaotic times getting family photos with Santa, Quincy trying to escape, Monty playing dead, me trying to kneel and control and Russ getting control, Santa confused!

Happy Holidays!

I am scheduled to have a hip replacement at the beginning of September this year and unfortunately I have to shut down the website early as I do not feel well enough to process orders.

I hope to reopen the website for mailing orders in the middle of October.

In the meantime, you may place orders for the free PDF files that I have on my website as well as the PDF files that you pay for. For instant the blackwork embroidery patterns, fine white work patterns and the metal thread information PDF file. Once I receive your order, I will e-mail you a PayPal invoice to pay for the PDF file.

Wendy Innes has kits available for the Hummingbird stumpwork kit that you may order from my website and the kit is mailed directly from Wendy. I will e-mail you a PayPal invoice to pay for the kit once I receive your order.

Thank you for your continued interest in my website,

Best wishes,

Tanja

I hope you have a happy and healthy 2022

Tanja, Monty and Quincy

Fall has arrived in Alberta and to celebrate the kit of the month for September is the Maple Leaf needle painting kit reduced by 25%.

There is a choice of thread colour for the leaf veins.

Maple Leaf Kit

Getting away from city to the rocky mountains of Jasper.

I have brought in the super sharp and fine tipped KAI hand embroidery scissors. The scissors are made in Japan and are light weight. I have a pair that I have been using for many years on a variety of different hand embroidery techniques, including metal thread embroidery and they have maintained their sharpness.

I have straight and curved blade scissors.

KAI 4 inch Scissors

The kit of the month for March is the blackwork peacock kit which is reduced by 20%.

The instructions are written with the beginner in mind and the kit comes with all the supplies required to stitch the peacock and a choice of counted ground  fabric.

Blackwork Peacock

Get $20.00 Canadian dollars off when you spend $100.00 Canadian dollars or more (converts to approximately $16.00 US dollars off when you spend $83.00 US dollars or more).
Enter coupon code: BD20-2019
Valid on Thursday 26th of December.

I am selling some “one of a kind” pendants and brooches that I have hand stitched. Each one is unique and I will not be duplicating the same colour way.
I have three pendants and four brooches available.
The brooches have a magnet back so they are easy to attach to clothing and also can be used as a needle minder.

New: Magnetic buttons that can be used as needle minders, fridge magnets, clothes button.

The button features a detailed print of an original hand embroidery design, stitched by Tanja Berlin

View Designs

To bring in the fall I am offering the Maple Leaf Needle Painting kit at a $10.00 Canadian Discount.

Amalia Cunha in Florida has done a wonderful job of stitching my needle painting Morning Glories embroidery. I am very impressed by her stitching and she is relatively new to embroidery.

I have added work-in-progress pictures of Teko a curly Shih Tzu Bichon on the galleries page of my website.

Just to let you know that I am back now from a weeks trip exploring New York and camping with the dogs in the Alberta Rockies.

I now am able to fill orders promptly when you place them.

Enjoy the rest of your summer.

Tanja and the Fluffies – Monty and Quincy

It was really nice to be recommended by Mary Corbet on NeedlenThread.com in her July 1st Newsletter for my needle painting kits.
It is awesome to be recognized by such a great needlework blogger.

Thanks Mary

Check NeedlenThread out for very useful tips in stitching, reviews on all sorts of things needlework and video stitch tutorials, below is the article she wrote on Needle Painting.

Needlepainting, Silk Shading, Soft Shading, Thread Painting…

I have designed and stitched a few needle minders. I have a couple available for sale of the 6star Sparkle.
If you are interested in having a needle minder made for you please email me with your request.

Inspirations is a long running needlework magazine which is exquisitely laid out with beautiful photographs of needlework designs to stitch and admire.

Inspirations releases a weekly newsletter – All Stitched Up!, in this weeks newsletter my Eastern Blue Bird on Pine Branch needle painting design stitched by Judith Peckham is featured under ‘What Are You Stitching?’. I am really pleased to see how beautifully Judith has stitched the bird and that she loved stitching it and that it has been represented in the newsletter.

Click here to subscribe to the Inspirations newsletter

You can purchase the kit for the blue bird from the following webpage: Eastern Blue Bird on Pine Branch Needle Painting Kit

Here is the article from the Inspirations newsletter under: What Are You Stitching?:

This is my first attempt at threadpainting – an Eastern Bluebird designed by Tanja Berlin. I took a class with Tanja when I attended my very first EAC seminar in Ottawa in 2015. I find threadpainting a very relaxing technique and have several patterns from Inspirations Magazine earmarked for future projects. Thank you for publishing such a nice magazine.’

Judith, we appreciate your kind words about Inspirations and look forward to seeing the completed projects you’ve earmarked for completion! We love that you find threadpainting relaxing and hope you find many more hours of stitching joy with needle and thread.

Au ver A Soie is the manufacturer of fine silk thread and yarns in France since 1820.

I now have two weights of the Soie silk threads which are great for sewing down metal threads.

100/3 is a fine twisted non-divisble 3 ply spun silk and comes as a 50 meter spool suitable for sewing down heavier couched metal threads such as: T69 and T70 Japan Thread, No. 12 (K2) and No. 13 (K1) Japanese Threads, No. 13 Passing Threads, Milliary Wire, 36 x 6 Check Thread, Gimp Cord, Large and Medium Grecian Twist, Large Back, Plates, Medium Rococco.

The Surfine is finer and can be used to sew down: T71 and T72 Japan Threads, No. 8 (K24 and No. 9 (K3) Japanese Threads, Kreinik Japan Threads, Passing Threads, 16 x 3 Check Thread and 8 x 2 Check Thread, Flatworm, Lurex Thread, Fine and Very Fine Grecian Twist, Fine and Very Fine Rococco, Spangles.

Use Gutterman’s polyester sewing thread to sew down Bullions, Cords – Twists, Jaceron, Lizerine and Pearl Purl as the thread is stronger and less prone to damaging when sewing down these metal threads. You can also use the Gutterman’s polyester thread to sew down any of the metal threads shown on the website.

I had a fun conversation with Gary Parr who hosts the We Talk Fiber Podcast. You can listen to our conversation below.

Fiber Talk with Tanja Berlin

For my first online class that I am running through my website I will be posting videos of the stitching process for the pendant.

This class is not to be missed, for the price of the kit you will get printed instructions and pendant supplies, PDF with colour work-in-progress pictures for the pendant as well as video tutorials for stitching the pendant.

The online class runs from Friday 19th of April until Sunday 12th of May. During this time you can download the PDF file with the work-in-progress pictures, watch the video tutorials, ask me questions about the pendant and post work-in-progress pictures of your pendant for feed back.

Here is the introductory video for the class, the video tutorials for the pendant will be filmed in the same format.

Only a few days left to sign up, the online class closes on Friday 15th of March.

10% Discount on Orders Placed on Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th of February

Enter the following Coupon Code on the Shopping Cart Page: Feb19-10%Special

Excludes Sale Items

January was a very busy time with unfortunately no stitching time but I have made 100+ kits to mail to New Zealand for my teaching trip in March/April.

The website also had been increasingly experiencing periods of slow loading time of the web pages, which has made it hard sometimes to peruse the website or to place an order so my IT guy – Ryan worked hard on fixing the issue and we determined it was time to move the website to host that could better cater for the amount of traffic that the website is receiving.

I am happy to say that the website is now in its new home and the web pages are loading at a faster speed which will be more fun for you to browse the information pages and to place your orders.

Have a Happy February,

Tanja

The Chipmunks Needle Painting Kit is now available for purchase. This is an advanced design with 30 pages of detailed instructions and diagrams to guide you through the embroidery.

There is a choice of cotton or silk fabric, the fabric comes with the the design drawn on and the threads organized on numbered templates.

During January I am giving $10.00 CAD discount on the kit.

I have been working on my new blackwork design of Valais Blacknose Sheep, these are the cutest sheep on earth and I have to have them in an embroidery if I can’t have them in real life.

Here is a sketch of my design.

Here are a few steps of the embroidery.

The mountains stitched.

The grass and rocks partially stitched.

They now have faces.

And cute black patches on their legs ahhhh

Here’s a picture of Valais Blacknose Sheep that I can’t get enough off, they are so cute. There are a few pages on Facebook that you can follow the real sheep and on instagram #valaisblacknosesheep

In August my sister and her two children came to visit.

It was so nice to catch up and to share some adventures together. Both my niece and nephew are adventurous so we did lots of frill seeking out door things.

We had a fun time at Windsports in Calgary doing the zipline and skyline luge and my brave 13 year old nephew did the free fall (bungee jump).

Here’s us on the luge, great for all ages.

We did white water rafting in the horse shoe canyon, which was lots of fun and afterwards we did a hike up to Tryst Lakes in the mountains. Only a 3.5 km hike but a 250 m elevation so it is a hard uphill hike to a beautiful cirque lake. In the background you can see snow and it was a 26 degree Celsius day. A real adventure for all and in a wild area.

Only a week later the area was closed due to a bear attack on a near by trail. Fortunately we didn’t see any bears but we did see marmots and chipmunks.

The trail to the lake had lots of lovely wild flowers.

We visited lots of beautiful lakes, here is the family trying to skip stones on a lake.

We also went canoeing on the lake, and was photo bombed by a seagull.

My nephew decided he needed to test out how cold the mountain lake water is with his head, its cold by the way.

Johnson’s Canyon was a must visit for the family, beautiful canyon with waterfalls.

It is chipmunk paradise at Johnson’s canyon.

My nephew bonded with the dogs, Monty especially loved his calm demeanor and constant petting.

Monty also enjoyed having his fur braided by my niece, lulling him to sleep.

It was a very fun 10 days and it was sad to see them leave. Now I need a holiday from my holiday as it was go go go!

I have added a range of random length metal threads useful for smaller projects when you don’t require a yard or 10 yards of certain threads.

Check out this post by Mary Corbet on the NeedlenThread forum. 

Trestles and Slate Frames – at a Steal!

I known Mark Harris personally for over a couple of years when he moved with his wife to Canada from Australia and he came around and showed me his beautifully made slate frames.

They have now moved to England and are setting up his workshop there. He is taking pre-orders for slate frames and trestles at a good price, so he can purchase the equipment to make the frames and trestles in England.

I would highly recommend Marks frames and stands.

It may take a while for you to get the slate frame or trestles as he will be busy for a while setting up and making the pre-orders, but it will be well worth the wait.

I love the Yazzii organizers, they are well made and hold a lot of needlework supplies.

I have used the Yazzii organizer large when I am travelling to teach for many years as the soft case squashes nicely into my suit case.

I have brought in a couple of the larger Yazzii organizers which would be great for taking to classes and meetings or using at home.

It has been a tough start to January 2018 for me, experiencing a heavy cold and cough so sorry for the delay in notification for this months kit of the month.

Calgary is in the middle of a cold winter with lots of snow and I am looking forward to the return of spring but I will take advantage of the snow and still do some kicksledding with Monty.

The kit of the month for January is the Robin on Blossom Branch Needle Painting Kit. This very realistic form of embroidery is worked in DMC embroidery cotton threads on a cotton muslin fabric and is an intermediate to advanced level.

You can see my other needle painting designs on the Needle Painting Information page which are rated from beginners to advanced.

During December I am offering my cross-stitch Meets Blackwork Patterns at $5.00 a PDF Pattern download instead of $15.00 a pattern.

I am also offering my Blackwork Silhouette Patterns at $5.00 for a PDF Pattern download instead of $15.00 a pattern.

The patterns come as easy to read large charts as well as instructions with step by step numbered charts for the blackwork patterns on the embroidery.

All the designs are good for beginners and fun for any level of embroiderer.

Berlin Embroidery Designs Cyber Monday Sale!

Enter the following coupon code in the shopping cart for 15% discount off your order.

cyber201715%

I have a few different hardwood decorative laying tools available which are great for laying embroidery threads or positioning metal threads when you sew them down.

I have received a new order of metal embroidery threads and I now have the following metal threads back in stock:

Pearl Purl:

Gilt No. 1 Pearl Purl

Gilt No. 3 Pearl Purl

Silver No. 2 Pearl Purl

Passing Thread:

Gold 2% WM No. 7 Smooth Passing Thread

Gilt No. 6 Smooth Passing Thread

Silver No. 6 Smooth Passing Thread

Copper No. 6 Smooth Passing Thread

Gold 2% WM 8 x 2 Check Thread

Silver No. 6 Broad Plate

Mary Corbet of NeedlenThread wrote a lovely review of my website on Friday, thank you Mary.

With the review she wrote there is a 10% discount code to use on my website until Friday 27th of October, so pop on over to her forum to read the review and to get the code 10% discount code.

Tanja

Berlin Embroidery: A New Look – and a Discount!