Susan Battle: Hello! I am Susan Battle, owner of The Point of it All. This video is how to needlepoint and in this segment, I will be focusing on threading a needle and starting your thread in your canvas. One option for threading your needle is to use a needle threader. So what you are going to do, is insert the eye of your needle over the threader, put your thread right through there and pull, your needle is threaded.

Another method for threading your needle is to wrap the thread around the base of the needle, pull it off, so you have a tiny little bit, thread that through the eye of the needle and pull it out like this and your needle is threaded.

Now, I am going to show you how to start a thread. You are not going to put a knot here, essentially no knots in needlepoint, instead, you are going to come up from the back of your canvas and you are going to create a little tail, probably about an inch. You are going to hold that with your finger, then you are going to start stitching, which I am going to explain in the next segment and as you stitch, you are going to catch that tail and that will firmly anchor your thread.

As you can see from the back, we are just going right over that thread, right over that tail. In the next segment, I will be demonstrating the basic Continental Stitch.