Connecting the DOTS !

As a designer in this bazaar business of needlepoint at the wholesale level....I have learned a lot and swallowed a lot....had to accept that not everyone has the same standards of honesty as I do and that in order to protect your designs from all sorts of mishaps...{how's that for being polite?}, you have to be constant at policing the wholesale business.....I have heard such horror stories from other artists , how a former wholesaler that was in trusted with your creations, had abused them in such an overt fashion as to make a person believe that they are no longer in the USA, but Mars where anything goes. This even applies to stitch charts and charted designs....my God is nothing safe?. If I was a young designer and just starting out, I would take a serious look at the business and from day one trust only yourself to protect your property. Contracts are nice but hard to impose when your canvases are all overseas and many wholesalers refuse to tell the artist what painting service has your property...what is that !!!!


When you lease a car , doesn't the lessor have a right to know where you have it housed?...of course, just another way of keeping the artist off kilter.....


The above designs started from a piece of cloth I was given...the center piece was to fit a set-in bench I believe...I liked the design so much on 18st that I took two portions and made them pillows on 13st...these were all put in the wholesale line under "by Gail" on November 18-19, 2002.


When I pulled the line in Jan 2009 from the, then current ,wholesaler, these designs were never returned along with hundreds of others. OK, cut your loses....move on , as a designer you are the source and as long as you have your talent and ability to paint, you are always moving forward. Old designs are great, but a dead end. What I clearly find outrageous, is that a pirated design can not only show up in a ad with no mention of the true designer, but also at a trade show with your name expunged, and a a little sign professing it to be a new design, when it clearly was not.
How can this person look at themselves in the mirror and not have the glass shatter from all the lies they have told?
Lack of conscience is a grave thing to bypass, because in the wee hours of the end of your life you have plenty of time to look back on how you have conducted yourself...very sad...very very sad that you choose to conduct your life this way.


I am not perfect , but have standards of honesty, and refuse to take the other path...


I love designing needlepoint, and really hate to see standards not withheld.


Trial by fire, is what I call the last 11 years. The Wholesale business needs a tonic if it is to grow and flourish....It is the artist and their vision that drives the whole industry We are it's core. Without us, there will be nothing new to distribute, so take care!