The Snowman's Face and Background

Nordic Snowman's Face and Background

This close-up shows the snowman's face pretty well.  It is stitched entirely in tent stitches using either white Flair or blue overdyed Kreinik.  See his pink cheeks?  That is white Flair also.  It allows the painted canvas to show.  Flair does lovely faces because it is transparent or semi-transparent.  I've used the ecru Flair for the face of Aladdin in the past which gave him a tanned skin but still showed his features well.  Once I finished stitching the snowman's face with the Flair, I bought up the thread like I was going to stitch his eye with it, took the Flair out of the needle, used the tip of my embroidery scissors to open the Flair a little (it is a woven tube like Barbie doll hose), picked up a black bead with the tip of my tapestry needle, and dropped the bead inside the Flair. I worked the bead down the tube to the canvas, then threaded up the Flair again and took the thread to the back side where I secured it.  I may also use Flair to attach beads for snowflakes in the sky. I haven't decided that yet.

Speaking of the background, you can see I've started working it in a textured stitch made up of a diagonal mosaic variation.  Here's how you stitch regular mosaic stitch.
http://www.needlepoint.org/StitchOfTheMonth/2000/00-07.php

If you look at the stitch in the margin of my canvas, you can see that one does a 5 stitch length of diagonal mosaic in a row, then does another length slanting the other way for the second row.  A cluster of these stitches looks like a snowflake to me.  I am using Burmilana in the beautiful blue #3873 which matches the sky color.  This is an open stitch.  When I come to the white dot of a snowflake, I skip over it although to date all the snowflakes have fallen in open spots where there is no diagonal mosaic stitch.

I like the texture, especially since most of the snowman is in plain smooth tent stitches.  It makes a nice contrast.  You can also see in the photo that I am adding one tent stitch all around the canvas as I stitch it to help in finishing.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow