Saturday, September 13, 2008

Bored with Wizards?


Then let's head over to St. Petersburg, Florida and visit Silk Road Needle Arts.

http://www.silk-road-needle.com/index.htm


Click on every link you see and this rather plain website blossoms into glorious photographs of stitched and unstitched canvases. The dragon above is from JP Needlepoint and you'll see him and all his friends if you click on Designs and then find the Stitched Models link at the top of the new page.

Have fun exploring. Don't miss the Tip Gallery!

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Measles Cure for Wizards


Last night the wizard's left sleeve was adjusted. I pulled out the couched #12 silver Kreinik which I'd been thinking looked too heavy and replaced it with thinner Kreinik #4 which was done in long stem stitches. Let me tell you, it was HARD to do stem stitch over long laid silk stitches without disturbing the silk. But I managed it in the end and I like the effect so much that I also stitched the right sleeve the same way. I think there one long stitch has a couching stitch to hold it at just the right bend, but it was stem-stitched, too.

After that, I was on a roll! I lengthened the top bar of the bird's perch to make it look more realistic. Then I looked at the beads again on his jacket and decided the blue robe needed some silver metallic stars to make the effect better. So I added those, making the ones on the blue lower robe larger and the ones on the hood, jacket and upper sleeves smaller. There aren't many of these metallic "stars" (a big X with a -- and | on top for the larger ones and no straight line on the top of the other shapes for the smaller ones.

What do you think?

Can't see the photo well? Try the main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow