Saturday, August 6, 2011

Achieving Halloween Elegance with Threads

Another way to make a Halloween piece more elegant than scary is in your choice of threads.  Use a fuzzy purple thread for witch's hair and you aren't going to turn her into Coco Chanel!  Use a silk and you have a better shot at making her look well turned out and menacing instead of like a clown dressed for trick-or-treat.  We all love Halloween but not everyone wants a silly canvas on their purse front so we have to adjust our stitching a bit for Smilin' Jack and similar canvases.

Silk from City Needlework

A friend sent me a sample selection of a new Chinese silk floss from City Needlework to try.  I used it on the olive green leaves of Smilin' Jack.  The silk strand is made of six plies and comes in a 6 meter skein (that's a bit over nineteen and a half feet).  Each ply comes out easily from the bundle and handles well.  The plies are slightly crinkled like a perle cotton in miniature so clearly they are not flat silk.  The silk feels good and the colors I have are handsome.  The City Needlework website shows a lot of colors available and $4 a skein for the 6 meter ones is a reasonable cost as silk prices go.  I don't know how colorfast it is.  I haven't tested the olive green I used.  This is a silk worth trying out to see what you think.  So far, my impression is positive but I have only used one color on a small area of one canvas.
http://www.cityneedlework.com/silk.html

If you happen to live anywhere near the San Mateo, CA shop, you might drop by and look at the colors and pick up a few to test.  Anyone with comments, please speak up in the Comments section or email me at chillyhollow at hot mail dot com so I can post a comment for you.  Thanks!

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Hurricane Season

It never dawned on me what needlepoint shops on the coast do during hurricane season--they pack up the big rug canvases to keep them safe!  Needle Nicely is showing off some of their beauties as they are being packed away in waterproof containers until the season ends around October and the tourists start returning to Florida for the winter.  Stay safe, rugs!
http://needlenicely.blogspot.com/2011/07/hurricane-season.html

http://needlenicely.blogspot.com/2011/07/rugs-and-wallhanging.html

http://needlenicely.blogspot.com/2011/08/they-said-it-wouldnt-last.html

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com