In my rambles through estate sales, tag sales, and rummage sales, I often come upon wonderful needlework projects in need of a bit more (or a lot more) additional work. Sometimes my finds are needlepoint canvases on which the crafter did all the stitching but then tucked the work away without going further.

These little pillows started out as completed canvases I found at two different sales. I turned them into pillows by cutting velvet backs from a velvet remnant I had on hand, stitching the velvet backs to the needlepoint fronts, and stuffing the result.

Here are the backs. My velvet remnant was a perfect color to complement the flower designs.

This stool is the result of a double rescue. A neighbor was getting rid of a little stool whose fabric top had become worn and grubby. I removed the old fabric and substituted a completed needlepoint canvas that I found at an estate sale, adding some cotton batting underneath.

I can’t resist anything with pansies on it.

This pillow came into my life as a partly finished kit with yarn and directions included. Some ambitious crafter had gotten bored with it and set it aside, and it ended up at a tag sale. I worked on it for a while but then I got busy with other things so I passed it on to my mother, who is a long-time devotee of needlework and very talented.

Lo and behold, the following Christmas it came back to me–complete, and made into a pillow by my sister. As you can see, the design uses a wider variety of stitches than the simple needlepoint technique.

Sitting on a shelf in my study are two more partly finished kits I rescued from, I think, a church rummage sale. This one is a needlepoint kit, maybe the type that comes with the complicated part already worked–in this case, the flowers.

The crafter then has only to fill in the background. This crafter apparently started but didn’t get too far. One of these days, when I finish several other projects, I will take up where the original crafter left off.

The other is a really cute thing–a crewel embroidery kit that definitely deserves some love and attention.