Knots or Not?

I’ve been promising to talk about starting threads for a while now. It’s a complicated subject. You can start a thread by putting a knot on the back side. You can also start stitching by putting a knot on the front side and stitching over the thread that goes from the knot to where you start your first stitch, or you can start stitching without a knot at all. I’ve used all three techniques on Lani’s Autumn Leaves and I think which one you choose depends on the threads, the area to be stitched and your own personal preference. Let me explain.

You’ve probably heard of away knots, or in line knots, or waste knots. These are all knots put in various places on the top of the canvas. The thread runs from the knot on top of the canvas along the back and then comes up where you plan to start stitching. Once you have finished that area, the knot is trimmed off. You do that by pulling up on the knot and cutting the thread as close to the canvas as you can. You can look at various types of starting top knots at these websites.

http://needlepoint.about.com/od/learnneedlepoint/ss/wasteknot.htm

http://www.needlepoint-for-fun.com/basic-needlepoint-stitches.html

http://www.needlepointnow.com/OnLineClassroom/ACSK-3/CanvasPrep.htm

To some extent, which you choose is a matter of personal taste. (Although Shay Pendray never puts her thread more than an inch away from her first stitch and she makes sure she will stitch right over it when she starts.) I don’t use any of these top knot techniques much, although I did use waste knots with the dark brown vein when I started the first brown leaf Using top knots works especially well if you are stitching straight lines or in a straight row. I tend to start my first few stitches on a canvas using waste knots but after a while I abandon them. People who are very careful with the back sides of their designs like the knot on top techniques as they do make for a tidier back. Me, I don’t care. I lavish most of my effort on the front and let the back take care of itself.

I am careful about the knots I tie in a thread that I’m starting, however. If you plan to put a knot on the back of a canvas, make it a small and dense knot. Ever tied a knot and had it turn out with a loop at the end or a much bigger balled knot that you’d planned? Those I trim with my scissors or cut off and replace with a smaller and denser knot. I don’t like a lot of lumps on the back and a knot is rather lumpy. To some extent this technique works best on natural fibers.

I find it easier to tie knots in cotton or silk or wool fibers than I do metallics or nylon threads. Some threads are slippery (Remember how Panache slips out of the needle eye?) and their knots will untie themselves sometimes. If you have a thread like that, consider another starting technique. If your thread is very stiff, like Japan Gold or twist, for example, you can’t tie a knot in it at all. You have to put a loose tail on the back and secure it with stitches taken through the threads already on the back of the canvas and over the loose tail.

Some of these problems can be solved by using techniques that don’t involve knots at all. See the photo above? Thats a double strand of my Impressions, which I’m using for the tan leaves and the purple backgrounds. Any time you are stitching with two strands of a thread you can make a loop “knot” to start the thread. All you do is cut double the length of thread that you normally stitch with. If you use a 24 inch length of thread in your needle, cut twice that, or 48 inches. Then put both ends in the needle’s eye as above. Come up through your canvas but don’t pull the thread all the way through. Just leave enough of the doubled end on the back that you can put the needle through the middle of the loop once you put the needle back down through your canvas. Pull to tighten the thread and the loop will close and secure the threads. This is the technique I used for all the areas on Autumn Leaves where I used Impressions since I doubled the strand to cover and match the other stitches in other types of threads.

Of course once you start a thread, you are going to have to end it eventually when it runs out or when you need to switch to another color. But that’s a topic for another day.

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

Changing Yet Again

Once again I've changed the look here at Blogspot. I decided that the black letters on a green background might be hard on the eyes and I was pretty sure that the title didn't show up well against the green spring dogwood photo I used behind it. I've been studying the changes I made last week on various computers, and certainly things looked better on some monitors than others. But on some the changes I made to increase legiblity actually decreased it. Then I started thinking, this is a needlepoint blog, so why not use images of NP?

So I rummaged around, looking for photos of completed pieces which were the right dimensions for the header (which I can't change unless I grow better HTML skills than what I currently possess) and came up with the Anne Jerlow geishas stitched for the ANG Auction last year in Baltimore. The design is an outlined canvas by the late Anne Jerlow. Five of the geishas are above. I gave them all names and identities as I stitched them.

They are, left to right, the spoiled little rich girl Willow Geisha (the stitching of whose kimono gave me fits), the Tomboy Geisha with her plainer outfit based on male kimono patterns, The Bride in her fancy kimono modeled after Klimt's paintings and fancy headdress, the Yellow Fan Geisha who is the Bride's best friend, and the elegant Famous Geisha whose purple kimono is the fanciest and most expensive of them all.

The Famous Geisha is the successful best friend of the black Mother of the Bride Geisha canvas below that serves as my profile image. The Famous Purple Geisha and the Mother of the Bride Geisha are identical in Anne's canvas outline drawing but I stitched them as totally different people.

They were a lot of fun to stitch and now live with Barbara Hayden in Texas who placed the winning bid at the ANG Auction.

Hope you like the changes, but even more importantly, I hope they are easy on the eyes!

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

Ruth Has A Glue Gun And Knows How to Use It UPDATED

Well, maybe it wasn't a hot glue gun, but check out the stocking she just posted to her blog. Those hot fix crystal kits must be a load of fun! Here is the blog entry.



http://www.tistheseason.org/blog/2008/05/christmas-fairy-preview.html

And here is what I turned up about hot fix crystals via Google. The second link below is a tips page to give you an idea how this all works.

http://www.hotfixcrystals.com/files/crystals.htm

http://www.hotfixcrystals.com/files/tips.htm

This looks like something fun that might have lots of applications on other projects. Thank you, Ruth.

UPDATE: After I posted this blog entry, I emailed Ruth to ask her permission to use her photograph. She wrote back with permission ("I love free publicity.") but wanted me to clarify that the hot fix crystals system doesn't use a glue gun. Ruth said, "You don't use a glue gun to apply hot fix crystals. You use Swarovski crystals that have the glue already on the back and a special applicator that allows you to pick up the crystals, heat them and then apply. It is very cool but not a glue gun." Thanks for making the process clear, Ruth.

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

Jane Does Samplers

Most of you know charted pieces are not my best stitching, but another Jane (Jane Zimmerman) does them beautifully. Have you heard about the series of stitch encyclopedias that she is publishing? They are titled Ultimate Encyclopedia of Canvas Embroidery.

So far there is Volume One (it covers mosaic, cashmere, Scotch, Gobelin, eyelets and plaited stitches for NP) and Volume Two (variations on diagonal, crossed, woven, tied and some miscellaneous stitches) but two more are in the works. Volume Three is going to be about canvas composite stitches while Volume Four is supposed to cover multi-layered, multi-step stitches.

For details on the books, prices, ordering information, etc. just email Jane Z. herself at JaneDZ@aol.com. Needle Nook of La Jolla sells the two volumes that have been published or you can contact Ms. Zimmerman. Click next to see volume two....

http://www.needlenookoflajolla.com/storedir/proddetail.php?prod=9646219

I signed up for a newsletter about the books and just heard through that there is a website planned for the fall (www.janezimmerman.com). And Jane is offering the samplers that illustrate Vol. One and Two as charts. The photograph above is Sampler Two. Each chart is $25 for the instructions and list of necessary threads.

I have to say that photographs don't do Jane Z's samplers justice. They are usually done in silks and metallics in ecru or other neutrals so you have to see them in person to understand the sheen and geometric beauty they express.

The main blog has a photo of Sampler One. You can view it at the link below.

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

By the way, I have no idea why the links in this blog entry are not clickable. I've created them multiple times this morning in an attempt to make them hyperlinks but this feature isn't working here at Blogspot apparently. The HTML code looks perfect, too! Sorry. You can always head over to the blog list on the right and click on my Yahoo 360 blog link there, though.

Finishing from Wool and Willow Needlepoint

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I've discovered a shop in the Cleveland area that has a fabulous page of finishing. Click on any of the thumbnails to see larger photos. I grabbed a few from the link below, just to give you a taste and tempt you to visit them all. I was a little surprised at all the pillows. It may be a regional difference but around here we frame more needlepoint than is shown here. Enjoy!

http://www.woolandwillow.com/corner.htm

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

The Big Red Leaf

The last time I showed my progress on Autumn Leaves I said, “Next time we’ll talk about the brown and peach veins in the big red leaf you see here. I will also talk about the nylon thread Panache which I am using in the red/orange leaves. And I’ll finally get around to talking about the various ways of starting threads on this piece.”

Well, I’m going to not talk about starting threads yet. There is too much else to say about the big red leaf first. Sorry.

Let’s start today by looking at Panache, the nylon thread I am using for the red/orange leaves. Panache is a very tightly twisted thread, smaller in diameter than Patina, which was the first nylon perle-type thread that Rainbow Gallery put out. I am not a fan of nylon threads. They feel like you are stitching with gummie worms to me, and some of them are very difficult to keep in the needle’s eye.

If you aren’t familiar with Gummi worms, here they are in all their glory. It’s like eating rubber, only worse.

http://www.ilovesweettreats.com/Gummi_GummiWorms_Nutrition.htm

And here you can see Panache at the Rainbow Gallery website. See the resemblance? Ok, of course you don't. Panache does feel "artificial" to me, however. I think I might be unusually sensitive to how threads feel in my hands and I react to Panache because of that. I must say, for nylon threads, Panache is unusually well behaved.

http://www.rainbowgallery.com/detail.cfm?ID=1124

I’m using three colors of Panache--the orange-red PH31 “Burnt Orange,” the orange PN30 “Halloween Orange,” and the peach PN07 “Salmon.” The peach is for the veins you see in the middle of the big red leaf above. The other oranges are for the outside shading of the leaf. I’m doing the deep red in the center in Vineyards Silk Classics C-006 Tomato. Which brings up another point. All of the threads for the red leaf are shiny to some extent. Panache like all nylon threads, is very shiny. Vineyards Silks is 100% silk so it has a lot of sheen. When you stitch a motif like the leaf, you want to make sure that all of the leaf is sort of the same. The brown leaves are in Impressions and Mandarin floss, which are not particularly shiny. The purple background is also Impressions, and though it is a thread that is half silk, it doesn’t have the sheen of Vineyards Silks. My red leaves will have the silk sheen in the deepest red centers, then the higher shine on the outside edges in Panache. Occasionally there will be a light vein in Panache also. I’m trying to highlight the important leaves on this design by choosing thread shine appropriately. When you are picking threads, remember that shiny threads will seen to pop out of the canvas, or at least come forward a bit as you look at them. It wouldn’t have been right for me to use Panache in the purple background or in the brown leaves because they are less prominent than the red leaves are in this piece. It always pays to Know Thy Thread which doesn’t just mean how the thread stitches, but how it looks on the canvas.

A good way to learn about threads you haven’t used before, particularly if you have to mail order and don’t have threadaholic friends who can cut you a sample from their stash, is to check the manufacturer’s website. Rainbow Gallery is particularly good about giving tips on using their threads. Unfortunately, they haven’t added anything about Panache but their information about Patina will be useful. A nylon perle thread is a nylon perle thread, after all.

http://www.rainbowgallery.com/jaystips.htm

Nylon threads are twisted into a perle-type strand and they untwist themselves at the end closest to your canvas. You can counteract this by turning your needle slightly every 3-4 stitches to re-twist it again. Experiment turning the needle clockwise and counter-clockwise. You’ll discover that a counter-clockwise turn tightens up the strand and the clockwise direction, which you are unconsciously doing as you stitch, unravels the strand. Don’t over do it--you want your stitches to all be even, not some untwisted and some really smaller because you twisted too much.

When you cut a length of Panache, you will see regular bends in it made by being wound around the card. I didn’t see that the bends made any difference in the look of my little tent stitches on the front of the canvas. You can dampen the thread and the bends will come out, but this relaxes the thread enough that the cut end in your needle’s eye will seem to relax also. You will see the end spread out much more into the component fibers. None of this makes any difference in your stitching as far as I can see. I’ve stitched with both dampened and dried, undampened, and sopping wet Panache. The tent stitches all look the same to me. So I just cut a length of my color in an 18 inch length or less, and stitch away. I’m stitching using only 18 inches because the thread wiggles out of the needle eye a lot. The bends seem to help keep it in the eye so I make sure I cut a length that has a bend fairly close to one end of the length. Shorter lengths like 18 inches seem to help keep it in the needle better. Don’t have a ruler handy? Not to worry. The length from your elbow to the tip of your fingers is usually around 18 inches in most folks. Cut a length about that distance and you are in business!

Let’s look again at the photo. The brown center leaf I started on is on the left side of the photo. Look up diagonally from that leaf to the brown leaf in the center top. I’ve partly stitched that leaf in this photo. Follow the edge of the top brown leaf down into the red leaf. See the parallel brown lines that run from the brown leaf down into and across the red leaf’s edge? This is a painting mistake. Not to worry. We are going to stitch right over the brown lines where they are on top of the red leaf with the orange Panache threads. Remember that hand painted canvases are painted by human hands and people make mistakes. Even the most careful designer will occasionally miss errors in their canvases. So just keep an eye out for problems. They are usually very easy to correct as in this instance.

The last thing I want to talk about in the photo are the veins in the red leaf. You will notice that I am stitching the leaf from the top down. In areas where I have stitched something already, I start with the red leaf’s brown edge in half cross stitch, then switch to basketweave for the orange and orange-red shading. Then when I get to the vein, I do the brown outline stitch first, followed by the peach Patina that is the center of the vein. I’ll finish up when the peach is done by the other brown outline stitch. Notice that I am not always doing a solid brown line. Sometimes it makes more sense, particularly on a curve, to not have a thick brown line. Your eye will compensate and think the brown line is solid. If you stitch all around the peach vein in brown, the brown line will look too thick in places. As with all tent stitch pieces, keep a careful eye on what you are doing. If something looks wrong, just take out those few stitches and restitch.

But be a bit careful about reusing a thread you ripped out when that thread is Panache. Going through the rough holes of NP canvas may remove some of the shine. You don’t want a patch of your red leaf to be dull-looking.

Maybe next time I’ll get around to talking about starting threads. There is more to talk about while tent stitching Autumn Leaves than normal since I am talking about technique so much.

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

New Look at Blogspot

Don't panic. I've decided to say goodbye here to the Gibson Girl magazine image I've been using for a long time. I can't identify the artist and it has started to bother me that I'm using something without permission. So I've switched to a header using the dogwood tree outside the window where I mostly blog and a profile image (slightly altered thanks to Photoshop!) of myself.

Much better to be safe than sorry.

Anyhow, these changes mean I have to adjust the colors on the page to conform. I hope you can still read everything ok.

So thanks, unknown lady. I still love your look but everyone needs a makeover occasionally.

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

Basketweave Demonstration

I got a nice note this week from Martha M. thanking me for introducing her to the basketweave fireman (who walks up the steps but slides down the poles). The fireman was a new face to her despite her being a longtime needlepointer. Since this is a tip passed along from stitcher to stitcher, folks who live solitary stitching lives like I do these days might never get to hear about it. It is my pleasure to help, Martha. I’m sorry I couldn’t write you back privately. You have your Yahoo 360 message system in the default mode--it won’t accept replies to messages you send via Yahoo 360.

Thinking about Martha‘s experience, it occurred to me that some folks who have trouble with basketweave might like a little color-coded tutorial about how the stitch is done. I found it quite confusing when I was trying to learn how to do it, and I had the aid of my fellow Golden Swan Guild members to give me help and guidance! Luckily, basketweave is like riding a bike. Once you master it, you won’t forget how it is done.

I pulled out some 12 count mono canvas, found some brightly colored threads, and set to work. The results are above. Read them from the top down, but remember, I didn’t use the proper amount of thread in the needles. I used less to make it easier to see where the stitches go.

In the photo above in the top row you see the first stitch taken in bright red. I normally make sure my first stitch is always over a pole, but I can’t see that it matters much as long as the second stitch or row is moving in the correct up or down direction to set up the fireman’s motion. Besides, making the first stitch always a pole (or a stair step) is difficult on irregularly shaped areas on a painted canvas.

The second stitch (in lime green) is over a stair step. It is at the bottom of the row so the fireman can walk UP the diagonal. Hopefully you can see the canvas well enough to see the actual thread and see it is a horizontal like this __. The green thread has come up in the hole from the back and it will go down in the diagonal hole across the thread intersection, just like a regular tent stitch does.

Here I have the second lime green row finished and have started down the poles in row three which is blue. I stopped half way down the row so you could see the | pole threads that tell me to make this a down row. Again, I’ve brought the thread to the front for the next stitch but haven’t taken it down yet to help you see how the stitches flow.



The top photo shows row four in pink all done. I have turned the photo just before this paragraph on its side so you can see that this row (which is an up, stair step sort of row) makes a sort of toothed edge, which will be filled in by row five in purple the way that zipper sides mesh together.

The most comprehensive guide to basketweave I’ve ever seen is Davie Hyman’s book The Diagonal Basketweave, which talks in depth about all the issues stitchers may run into while stitching basketweave. Sadly, it is out of print now but if you can find a copy, it is a terrific resource. So here’s to you, Davie!

http://www.daviehyman.com/book.htm

And here’s to Martha M. who made me think it might be good to not assume everyone learns from reading and experimenting like I do. The rest of you lot--head out and introduce the fireman to all your stitching friends....


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

Tent Stitches Without Jagged Lines

Last week I got a nice note from Marj who has an alternate method of making a diagonal row of tent stitches look less jagged. She simply runs a thread underneath the row once she makes it. It's like doing trame except you put the underlying thread in after you do the top stitches.

Marj learned this technique from Marion Scoular's book "Advice is...." Apparently, Marion's mother taught her the technique. Always listen to Mom!

I don't own this book, having only seen it once and that copy was for display only. Guess I'll add it to my Christmas wish list.

http://www.needleartworks.com/dsgnr/mss/mss3.htm

Thank you, Marj!

By the way, anyone interested in learning more about stitching curves and circles on NP canvas might enjoy reading the late Mary Duckworth's article about this, reprinted on the ANG website from the 1978 Needle Pointers where it originally appeared.

http://www.needlepoint.org/Archives/Circles.php


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

Penguins Are Stealing My Socks

I know folks will be gone over the Memorial Day three day weekend so the next few postings likely won't be about Autumn Leaves. Let's look at the sales happening on the web instead.

If you are missing socks, you might want to check out the canvas on sale at The French Knot.

http://www.thefrenchknot.com/models/sale_canvases.html

If you've used up all your sick days at work and are reduced to calling in dead, there's a canvas for you at Garden District Needlework.

http://www.gardendistrictneedlework.biz/halfoffroom.htm

If you don't find a sale item that appeals above, how about a visit to Earth and Sky Designs' new website?

http://www.earthandskydesigns.com/

If you were charmed by Janet Moyer's Mexican Lady, Elaine Magnin has this canvas and many similar ones on sale.

http://www.elainemagnin.com/melshirtropl.html

Happy browsing!

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

Introducing the Fireman

The photo shows you the right half of the Autumn Leaves canvas. The brown leaf I started with in the center of the canvas is partly visible on the left side. In this photo I tried jumping around to stitch various areas. First I stitched the two purple background areas that are on the right side of the piece all in basketweave. You won’t see any knots on top of the canvas as I used a no knot technique to start the purple Impressions (#2056).

Then I stitched the bit of red leaf at the top right of the canvas, followed by the brown leaf in the right side lower corner.

The red leaf was stitched from the dark brown outline in towards the center. The dark brown/grey thread is 5 plies of my Mandarin Floss M821. I stitched the outline in half cross stitch first. Then I switched to two shades of Panache, stitching the bright orange #PN31 in basketweave, then switched to the darker red-orange PN30 when the color got redder. It was also stitched in basketweave.

The brown leaf was stitched from the inside out to the outline last, the reverse of the red leaf. I started in the middle of the leaf with the golden brown Mandarin Floss M842, again with 5 plies in basketweave. Then I stitched the dark brown bit at the bottom of the leaf with 5 plies of Mandarin Floss M886. After that I finished the inside of the leaf with two strands of my ivory Impressions 1146. The last thing I did was the very dark brown-grey outline, back in Mandarin Floss M821. This was stitched in half-cross stitch.

So you see I stitched the dark outline of the leaves in half-cross and the rest of the two leaves and the background was all in basketweave. But I jumped around a little, trying hard to make each area I stitched the same size/shape/tension of the other areas. I couldn’t tell any difference between stitching the outline first and then the center or working the areas with the center first, then the outline.

You can’t rush basketweave. There’s a reason that it is often used as meditation by experienced stitchers--making each stitch the same as all the others relaxes you as you concentrate on the tension, the angle of your needle (straight up so you put it down through the hole at a 90 degree angle to the canvas), and even whether you are stitching the basketweave diagonal upwards or down.

Ever stitched a large area of basketweave and had a diagonal ridge on it? This happens from one of two things--you either ran your thread through the back at a diagonal which made the front diagonal line of threads a bit more raised than its neighbors, or you accidentally did two down (or up) rows together instead of alternating working up the diagonal with the next row down the diagonal. To fix ridges caused by ending off your thread, simply run your thread through the back straight up vertically or across horizontally, or use an ending technique that doesn’t need the thread to be run through the back side’s stitches. More on that later.

To keep from doing two down rows one right after the other, you need to take a careful look at your mono needlepoint canvas. (This technique does not work for penelope canvas or interlock canvas, which are woven differently than mono canvas.) Head over to Needlepoint Now’s superb tutorial on needlepointing and look at the photo of all three types of NP canvas. Then look for the diagram of mono canvas in the middle of this page under the photo.

http://www.needlepointnow.com/OnLineClassroom/ACSK-1/Materials.htm

Look very carefully at the threads. Look down a vertical row of threads and you see they are woven under/over the horizontal threads. Look across a horizontal row and you’ll see the same over/under weave. This is the way you keep up and down basketweave rows straight. The thread intersection where a thread is on top we’ll call a pole. The thread intersection where a __ thread is on top we’ll call a step. Just remember that firemen slide DOWN poles and walk UP stairs and you’ll never ever forget whether you are going up your basketweave diagonal or down it, no matter how many times you are interrupted while stitching by the phone/kids/pets/spouses/doorbell.

It works like this (see the bottom of the page--”Stitching With the Weave of the Canvas”).

http://www.needlepointnow.com/OnLineClassroom/ACSK-6/TentStitch.htm

All you are doing is matching the diagonal rows of basketweave to the poles or steps of your canvas. Take that first stitch, then before you do row #2, look at the diagonal row where you will start row #2. Is the pole on top of both places at the top/bottom of the row where you might be able to start? Then that’s a down row. You will start at the top of the diagonal row and stitch down. Are all the stitches in row #2 steps? Then you start at the bottom of the diagonal row and stitch up. Be the fireman and walk UP or slide DOWN. (Many thanks to all the folks who have mentioned this to me over the years! It finally sunk in....)

Basketweave is done on the diagonal, with each row fitting like a zipper into the previous row. Repeat to yourself, the firemen slide down the pole and walk up the stairs as you stitch. A little observation and you will always know where you are with basketweave.

Back to my order of stitching. I don’t see any difference between stitching my half-cross leave outline before or after I did the rest of the leaf in basketweave. The one thing you are going to have to remember (besides the fireman and how he travels) is which side is up. To stitch my little red leaf in the upper right corner of this side of the canvas, I tuned my canvas upside down. This piece has Lani’s signature below the brown leaf in the bottom right corner in this photo, so I always know which is the “top” and which the bottom” of my design. When I get ready to finish this piece, the top and bottom don’t really matter but when I have tent stitches on the front, I have to be careful whether my tent stitches are from basketweave, continental or half-cross, to make sure I don’t mix up the /// stitches with something that is backwards or sideways.

Next time we’ll talk about the brown and peach veins in the big red leaf you see here. I will also talk about the nylon thread Panache which I am using in the red/orange leaves. And I’ll finally get around to talking about the various ways of starting threads on this piece.


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

The Gardener and Her Cat UPDATED

This lady's on eBay. I think she is charming. Much better to stitch her than weed in my opinion! UPDATE: Sadly, she drew no bids, so the gardener lady and her cat will go home and weed.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Dede-Designs-Lady-Gardener-Hand-Painted_W0QQitemZ370052818914QQihZ024QQcategoryZ3107QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

or Tiny URL

http://tinyurl.com/4lyevh

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

The Lady and the Peacock UPDATED

Isn't this lovely? It's a JudyAnn, one of my personal favorites. I found it on eBay.

http://tinyurl.com/5xlpba

UPDATE: I forgot to give you the link to JudyAnn's website. Me bad.

http://www.judyanndesign.com/

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

ta DA!

Here are both of the little Japanese girls. They will be on opposite sides of the purse but here you can see them together.

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

Fan Finito

Fan is done! Let the ANG Auction begin!

Well, not really. The magic fingers of Summer Truswell are going to take Fan and Butterfly and the lantern purse and combine them into something fun, a special memento of the ANG Indian Wells Seminar next September.

The last things I had to do with this piece was finish the kimono and do the gold and green pattern on top, then add a little backstitching around the kimono, mostly the left sleeve, two places at the bottom where the open organge stitches didn't hide the black painted lines and on the left shoulder. I've also backstitched around her left hand and her chin.

I am very happy with her. I'll post a photo of the pair when I get a chance.

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

The First Brown Leaf

The center brown leaf of the design is in this photo. It’s partially stitched to give you an idea of different approaches to tent stitching a design. The leaf is roughly in the center of the pattern. You’ll see two brown knots on top of the canvas to the right and left of the leaf. (More about those in a minute.) In this photo the brown outline of the leaf and several of the veins are partly stitched. First, I used half cross stitch for the brown outlines. I hope you can see in the left uppermost tip that the brown outline is not solid. I did not stitch a brown stitch at the point of that tip. Follow the tip down the right side of the point towards the leaf’s center and you will see a diagonal broken line of stitches. On a NP grid you can’t do a solid line when you are working on a Northwest to Southeast line in tent stitches. If you look at the other side of the leaf, you’ll see a Southwest to Northeast row of stitches that looks solid. The difference is the slant. While you have this piece in your hand stitching, the broken line is very obvious but if you put it down on a table and step away several feet, the broken line is hard to see. Our eyes compensate and see a line where there is none. So don’t let these slants bother you too much. (Unless of course you are stitching something that will be viewed from 6 inches or less all the time. Which is about as likely as my being elected Miss Universe tomorrow.)

Of course if we were stitching this in a multitude of stitches, I could do a row of backwards tent on top of the NW to SE line (reducing the plies of my Mandarin Floss from 5 to probably 3 so the “bump” of the top didn’t stick out too much) and the line would suddenly look much more solid.

The next logical step is fill the inside of the leaf with continental stitches. See the golden brown Mandarin Floss thread leading from the leaf center to the right side? That is where I stopped my continental stitch row. I came up in the “dirty” hole and then stopped and parked my needle on a pair of magnets above/below my canvas. This is how I cope with color changes. You’ll see more of this later, but basically if you stop half way through a tent stitch, you can pick up and finish that stitch later. Stay tuned on this one. Right now I just want you to know that’s how I stop using a thread. This was a really good place to show the technique even though I have several more rows of this color to do.

After doing the brown outline and veins in my brown thread in half cross stitches, I stitched continental stitches in the ivory (2 plies of Impressions) and golden tan (Mandarin Floss) I worked from top to bottom. In this picture I’m two-thirds done. I don’t really like using continental stitch here where all the threads I’m using are multiple plies (or a doubled strand in the case of the ivory Impressions). It is way too easy to disturb a stitch that was already finished when coming through a hole that already has a thread in it. But that’s how continental stitch is done. (Did you bookmark the places that show how half cross and continental are done? If not, go back a few blog entries to May 10 and refresh your memory.)

Note particularly the oval in dark brown at the upper left of the leaf. I worked my way around the outside of the leaf adding the outline but when I got here, I did not stop and fill in the center in my medium brown. I’ll do that later when I have that color out to do those areas. Please note that I have added another brown to my threads. I decided instead of stitching the outline of some of the dark red leaves in black as the canvas is painted, that I would add a very dark brown to the mix. I found Mandarin Floss M821 in my stash. It is a dark brown with grey undertones. It is now the thread that will outline and draw veins on this design. The medium brown now will be used in touches like the oval area here that needs a darker center than the ivory/golden tan majority of the leaf. Here are the threads, colors, and number of strands or plies used for the brown leaf.

5 plies in dark grey-brown (Mandarin Floss M821)
5 plies in medium dark brown - Mandarin Floss #M886 (Rainbow Gallery)
5 plies in golden brown - Mandarin Flos #M842 (Rainbow Gallery)
2 strands in ivory - Impressions #1146 (Caron)

Now to go back to the knots you see in the photo--there are three general ways to start threads on NP canvas. You can have knots on top of the canvas, knots on the back of the canvas, or use techniques that don’t involve knots at all. We’ll talk about this aspect of stitching another time.

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

Big and Little

I'm sure a lot of you are wondering when I'm going to start stitching. Soon, very soon! However, there are things that need to be done first. Remember, we are doing this piece in three stitches that look the same on the front (but not on the back). The goal is to stitch a piece with the front stitches all the same size and with the same look of plumpness in each stitch. We want the front of the canvas to look like identical rice grains have been laid very neatly out in rows.

However, I am using threads made from bamboo, rayon, silk, metallic fibers, and combinations of these. So I had to figure out if they could be made to look exactly alike on the front. As you can see, I tested this by stitching two rows of 10 stitches each in the half cross stitch, then tried a few rows of basketweave.

The threads are (from top down):
Impressions - a silk/wool blend in purple that is one strand
Patina - a rayon twisted strand in peach, like cotton perles except 100% rayon
Mandarin Floss - a six stranded floss made of bamboo fiber in brown
Silk Braid - a strand made from 4 plies of silk and 4 of metallic rayon twisted together in gold/ivory
Vineyards Silk - a silk strand in red

All the threads are a strand not meant to be plied except for the brown Mandarin Floss. For my half cross stitch row test, I used all six plies of Mandarin Floss.

After I stitched my test rows, I decided that Impressions looked skimpy compared to the rest and that the Mandarin Floss looked lumpy. Any time you end up with lumpy tent stitches with a thread, reduce the number of plies by one and try again. In my experience this often improves the tent stitches.

So I tried again with two strands of Impressions and only five plies of Mandarin Floss. Everything else was the one strand I used for the first test. You'll see the result in the basketweave diagonal rows under the first test. I am happy with the adjustment in the amount of thread used in the needle. I think I evened out the size of the threads I'm using so that my tent stitches will all be about the same.

If I was stitching this piece all in Appleton crewel wool, for example, I would probably not have to do this. Most colors within a brand of thread are very close in diameter, with the possible exception of black and other very intense colors (very dark navy, dark brown, deep reds) because the number of trips through the dye bath to achieve these very deep and dark colors sometimes thins the thread. So keep an eye on your black thread when you want to keep a black tent stitch the same as a yellow tent stitch.

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

The First Autumn Leaf

Now we can finally get started on the Autumn Leaf piece by Lani. I plan to start in the center with the small brown and ivory leaf. There are three colors in the leaf: dark brown outlines and veins, a golden brown shaded area in the center, and a pale ivory leaf around the edge. You’ll also note that the upper left hand corner and the bottom right hand corner are very dark brown leaf tips. The threads I have for these colors are:

dark brown - Mandarin Floss #M886 (Rainbow Gallery)
golden brown - Mandarin Flos #M842 (Rainbow Gallery)
ivory - Impressions #1146 (Caron) AND
ivory - Silk Lame Braid SL03 (Rainbow Gallery)

Mandarin Floss is a 6 ply thread that looks like cotton floss except it is made of bamboo fiber. Once you separate the strands into 6 separate plies, each ply seems a little fuzzy. compared to cotton floss plies. I think the colors are very like those in nature, particularly the greens and browns. Here is Rainbow Gallery’s color card. It is now available in some overdyed colors, apparently, but for this project I choose all solids.

http://www.rainbowgallery.com/detail.cfm?ID=993

Impressions is a 50% silk/50% wool blend. The thread is a thin strand, sort of like crewel wool but with a sheen from the silk in it. Caron makes both solids and overdyes in Impressions. Here is information and the color card from their website.

http://www.caron-net.com/threads.html

http://www.caron-net.com/impsolid.html

Silk Lame Braid is a new thread in the last 6 months or so. It is one strand made up of 4 plies of silk strand wrapped by 4 plies of metallic gold. It is meant to be stitched as one whole strand instead of being plied on 18 count NP canvas. Here’s the Rainbow Gallery website again, with a link to the color card.

http://www.rainbowgallery.com/detail.cfm?ID=1149

You’ll note I have two threads in ivory--the Silk Lame Braid and the Impressions. Both are the right color but I thought I might use the slight metallic sparkle in some of the leaves or perhaps in the border. I haven’t decided yet if the first small center leaf will be done in the ivory silk/wool blend or in the ivory silk/metallic blend.

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

May 2008 Chilly Hollow Newsletter Article

Brief Introduction to Blogging

Blogs and bloggers are everywhere on the Internet these days. Blogs are essentially diaries, with the latest entry on top. If you are curious about blogging, the best place to start is to find a few blogs you like to read and then keep up with them via an aggregator (also called a reader).

First, you need to find blogs about things that interest you. There are all sorts on many topics, but you can find a list of blogs about needlepoint on either of my blogs, the addresses of which are at the end of this message. If you want to find cooking blogs or dog blogs or political blogs or whatever, use Google which has a search engine that just searches for blogs.

http://blogsearch.google.com/

Ok, now you are addicted and there are 10 blogs you like to read. What next? This is where a reader comes in. A reader is software that checks the blogs you follow and let you know when a new entry is posted to any of them.

Some browsers like Firefox and Safari have built-in readers and there are a ton of widgets that you can add to Yahoo, etc. that will collect RSS, Atom and other types of feeds but in a less organized form than readers do. Feeds are little programs that collect update information on one blog or website. So you have a new blog entry collected by a feed which can be collected in large groups by a readers (This is very simplified, you understand.) The main readers I’ve used or had recommended are Bloglines, Google Reader and NetVibes.

They all work the same way. You go to their website and set up an account, then copy/paste your favorite blog URL addresses into an area there. As you copy each address, you may need to click that every recent entry from that blog has been read to get yourself up to date for new feeds. Once you are done, then you just check back at the website and log yourself in for your feeds. NetVibes has a widget you can add to your browser home page. The widget (widgets are tiny mini programs you can copy/paste into larger programs like browsers) will make results show up on your home page of your browser so you don’t have to go any place else to check on new blog entries. NetVibes seems to have complex tools that a more tech-oriented audience might enjoy learning to use on hundreds of blogs they follow, but since we have both novices and experts among the needlepoint world, I mention both types.

Here are three reader websites to get started. There are MANY more.

http://www.bloglines.com/

http://www.google.com/reader/view/

http://www.netvibes.com/

None of this is really hard to set up but it all takes some playing around to make it work, and some things don’t work with non-Windows machines or with certain browsers. This article will help some, but the best thing to do is jump in and try some things. If you have a Gmail account already, the Google Reader is really easy to access when you log in to read your emails.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/03/30/the-state-of-online-feed-readers/

Next time I’ll point you to information about setting up your own blog.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
blogging at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
with mirror blog at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com


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

The Blue Wizard Santa Is Done

And here is the finished Blue Wizard Santa ornament. Hope you like him! A professional finisher would have done a neater job, but beads cover many sins. [LOL]

Remember, he is going to the ANG Auction in Indian Wells, CA next fall. So watch out for him there. Bid high and often and if you are the winning bidder (or if you are at the auction) send me a photograph holding the Blue Wizard Santa for my scrapbook.

Here’s to you, Nina!

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

The Blue Wizard Santa's Beads, Part Two

Ok, I’m back to finish up the beading on the Blue Wizard Santa. The crystal is attached (Can you see the bumper bead on top of it?) and the beading hanging loop made and attached. Now I needed to add some more beads to his body before putting the ornament together.

I scattered little Mill Hill beads on his robe, in his beard and on his hat. I did not stitch them down--I just put the ornament on a tray and scattered beads here and there over the Santa, trying to decide where they looked best. Since the wizard already has metallic blue and silver dots all over his robe, beads there looked odd.


I liked the thought of beads in his beard and hair but my beads are blue, not silver, and the color contrast between dark blue beads and grey hair didn’t please me. So I ended up simply adding a row of little dark blue Mill Hill beads to his hat above the row of silver metallic stitches.

Next, my loop. I have a card of beading wire (size #24) that is very thin silver. (See the photo above.) I cut a long 6 inch piece (with my paper cutting scissors since metals dull embroidery scissors quickly) to make my hanger loop and threaded a variety of small blue beads from the mixed bag of sizes with my Mill Hill Petite Glass Beads #40020 added at random until I had enough beads to bend the wire to make a loop. The beads were strung along the loop and I had two long lengths of bare wire in my hand. A quick twist of the wire and the beads were held in place.

Then I stuck the two thin wires through a group of larger beads, starting with a bead just a little larger than the Mill Hill beads, then a slightly bigger bead, a larger one still, etc. The final bead at the bottom was a large tubular one. (These are called bugle beads in the beading world.) You’ll see how the beads grow in size if you look at the picture of our Santa ornament above. This can be done with thread, of course, but I thought wire might be a little more durable. You just have to have wire small enough to go through Mill Hill beads and bottom beads with large enough holes that two pieces of wire will fit.

Next, coil the remaining wire below the beads and stitch the coil firmly to the backside of your needlepoint. This is done before the ornament is put together. Make the wire as secure as you can and the bugle bead as close to the top of the wizard’s hat as you can. Now assemble the ornament. You may find as I did that now the loop is a little higher above the wizard’s hat than it was originally and that the crystal you attached firmly is now a bit wobbly. Beads are very wiggly things. You may think you have them attached securely but they are masters of fooling you! As I started to add beads to the seam, I took care of this problem by clustering a few of the larger beads behind the loop and that stabilized it. I did the same thing with the crystal.

The edging went on next. There are several ways to attach beads to a seam. I just picked up various sizes at random, using more of the small Mill Hill Beads than any other size and color, and scattered them all along the edge, putting a few a little forward, clustering some in the back, etc. This gives a randomness to the trim that I liked. I forgot to say I used one ply of my overdyed navy blue Needle Necessities cotton floss to attach the beads. I started at the top of the hat and worked my way down the right side, then when I got to the bottom edge, I started making fringe with assorted blue beads. I stacked the beads, working from a larger bead to smaller ones, using the bumper and doubling back techniques to end off the fringe. Once I put fringe all across the bottom, I worked my way back to the right side again adding some of the small Mill Hill beads in front of the fringed edge with a few of the smallest navy beads from the assortment pack thrown in. I put a row in front of the fringe to help hide the seam. The fringe alone didn’t do that. Once the bottom fringe was finished and the row set in front of it, I worked my way up the left side and ended at the top of the wizard’s hat.

Finishing isn’t that hard. It just takes time and some manual dexterity. My finishing is not as good as what a professional finisher can do but small ornaments turn out ok and it saves money I’d rather spend on framing, something I can’t do for myself (although it isn’t hard as long as you have access to materials and tools that make the job better and easier).

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

The Blue Wizard's Beads, Part One

Remember Jane’s Law for Christmas Needlepoint? It states one must use metallics, beads, sequins, fake jewels, anything glittery you can find on Christmas piece so your finished needlepoint will be able to compete with the Christmas tree lights and other ornaments. So our little ornament needed beads, and since I also needed to hide the seam where the ornament’s needlepointed front meets the backside’s fabric, why not bead there also? And since we are going way overboard (Jane’s Law!!!), why not add a beaded fringe to hang from the bottom? It is obvious that this little Santa doesn’t want anyone overlooking him come Christmas!

I already had a Swarovski-type crystal from Mill Hill to attach to his front and had chosen a variety of blue beads for him, so all I needed to do is make some decisions as to how to bead all the parts--the hanging loop, the edges and the fringe at the bottom. But first, let’s talk about the beads I added on top of the needlepoint before I put the ornament together.

Mill Hill sells crystals in various shapes and colors--snowflakes, hearts, flowers, drops, etc. I bought a package of three little blue round flower shapes and I wanted to use one on our wizard. There were several potential places to put it--on his pony tail clasp that holds his beard in check, on his robe, or on his hat. I just laid the crystal here and there and decided it looked best on his wizard’s hat.

There are a ton of beading websites which are helpful when you are deciding how to do simple things to your NP. (Any beaders out there? Got tips on good tutorials? And what are doubling back and bumper beads really called?) The techniques they teach you really will come in handy doing various things but for now, all we are going to talk about is doubling back and bumpers. The crystal has a hole in the middle, so there are two ways of securing it to the hat. I could come up in the middle repeatedly and then go down around the shape and hold it fast that way. But my middle hole isn’t very large and I was pretty sure I could only put the needle through it three times. So I used the doubling back/bumper technique. (Refer to the image above.)

This means I knotted my thread, came up through the hat in the center of the area where I wanted the crystal to be, put the needle through the middle of the crystal and pushed the crystal down to rest on the canvas. I checked the placement, just to make sure I got it right and threaded a tiny Mill Hill bead on the needle. Now I had the crystal on top of the canvas and the much smaller Petite Bead on top. Think stacking pancakes, ok? Needlepoint, large crystal, small bead. I simply took the needle and put it back through the crystal and then through the canvas again. This turns the little bead so that it lies on its side. The thread goes through the NP canvas and the crystal and the smaller bead, then makes a U turn, plunging through the crystal only back to the back side of my NP where I secured it. The small bead keeps the crystal in place securely, acting as a bumper. The trick is to find a bead just a little larger than the hole in the bead or crystal you want to attach. That way it holds the larger piece without any danger of being pulled back through the larger item’s hole. And a small bead doesn’t show much. Look for it in tomorrow’s photo and see if you can see it on top of the crystal.

Remember the doubling back/bumper stuff. I’m going to use the same steps to make the fringe for the bottom of this piece.This is getting quite long, so let’s take a break here. More tomorrow!




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

Assembling a Wizard

The photo to the right shows the materials needed to assemble the Blue Wizard Santa, the ornament I finished stitching almost two months ago. It is going to rain all weekend here in Chilly Hollow and since I need a nice sunny day to finish stitching Fan the little Japanese girl canvas, I will use my days off to assemble the Blue Wizard into an ornament instead.

The Blue Wizard Santa is my own design, inspired by my friend Nina Goerres and her Fancy Carole Santa ornaments. Nina died last year but her memory lives on in her friends and in the new memorial award at the ANG Exhibit which will be for the best Christmas piece. Nina loved Christmas needlepoint and stitched a great deal of it herself. This little blue wizard is going to the ANG Auction and I’m hoping the money raised from it will go to the funding of Nina’s ribbon. ANG doesn’t just give out memorial ribbons like this. They have to be funded to cover the costs indefinitely. This is my way of contributing to the costs and thanking Nina for all she did for me over the years of our friendship.

Anyway, I’m ready to assemble the Blue Wizard into an ornament. I want it to be flat finished, which means no padding inside. I also want it to be light-weight, another reason to use plastic canvas as the stiffener inside instead of slightly heavier cardboard or foam core and to omit padding. So I made a color copy of the stitched piece, cut that out, and used it as a pattern to cut the plastic NP canvas (a tad smaller than the ornament) and also the back fabric (larger than the ornament). I am using a heavy cotton chintz fabric that has a sheen.

I plan to hand-stitch the front and back together around the top and sides, stuff the plastic canvas in through the bottom slit and then stitch that up. Afterwards I plan to cover the edge where the front and back meet with beads and also make a beaded loop to hang the ornament by. You can see packages of beads I pulled from The Stash to see which would work best in the image. My next step is to iron the fabric to get the wrinkles out and add beads and a blue crystal to the front of the wizard’s hat and robe. Then I’ll trim the finished canvas to about an inch from the edge, and sew the front and back sides together except across the bottom. Once the sides are stitched, I’ll insert the plastic canvas through the bottom slit, sew that together, and then start attaching beads all along the edges. I will also make a beaded loop to hang the ornament.

I hope to have all that done by tomorrow so I can start the beaded edge.


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

Autumn Leaves: The Tent Stitch Family (Half-Cross)

HALF-CROSS STITCH is stitched this way (see Threadneedle Street’s diagrams in the link below also).

http://www.threadneedlestreet.com/ContinentalHalfCross.html

Half-cross stitch uses the least amount of thread of all three tent stitches, so when you are running out of thread, switch to half-cross. However, there is very little padding on the back with half-cross. If you look on the back side diagram at Threadneedle Street’s link above, you see straight lines. It doesn’t distort as much as continental but it does pull things out of true some. Like continental, it may be worked in either horizontal or vertical rows. It also does very well in small areas or for outlining. But it is terrific when you only have a little bit of thread left and you aren’t worried about distortion or wear. It is worked from right to left (or left to right, doesn’t matter) just like continental in the first row. But in the second row you come up and go down the same way as in the first row instead of coming up in dirty holes like continental does.

http://www.stitchopedia.com/HalfCrossStitch.html

I will use all three stitches while stitching Autumn Leaves so you can see how they work up and what situations they are best suited for.

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

Autumn Leaves: The Tent Stitch Family (Continental)

CONTINENTAL is stitched this way. (See Threadneedle Street’s diagrams in the link below).

http://www.threadneedlestreet.com/ContinentalHalfCross.html

This stitch (and half-cross) may be stitched in either horizontal or vertical rows. If you stitch it across a horizontal row, you work from right to left, then for the next row, you work from the left toward the starting point on the right, making sure that you come up in a “dirty” hole and go down in an empty one. (A “dirty” hole just means a hole in your needlepoint canvas that already has a stitched thread in it.) To stitch vertically, the first row goes down and then you work you way back up to the right of the first row, making sure the new row’s stitch comes up in a dirty hole from the row you just stitched.

Want to turn your square piece into a parallelogram? Continental is the stitch for you! Look at the back side. You’ll see long slants on the back and the regular tent stitch look on the front. This constant pull in one direction distorts the canvas a lot. There is a lot of thread on both sides of the canvas so continental wears ok, just not as well as basketweave.

But on the other hand, this is the perfect stitch for small areas like the tiny leaves we have in Autumn Leaves. I would not use it for a large area unless my canvas was on a frame, and even then I find my stitch tension is easier to control if I use basketweave. But it works very well in certain situations.


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

Autumn Leaves: The Tent Stitch Family (Basketweave)

There are three types of tent stitch--basketweave, continental and half-cross. They look identical from the front but from the back of the canvas, they look very different. Each stitch has advantages and disadvantages which I’ll go over. Let’s start with basketweave. Here’s how you stitch it--

http://www.threadneedlestreet.com/Basketweave.html

Notice how the threads on the back look like a woven basket? That gives BASKETWEAVE its name. The fact that the threads run both horizontally and vertically means basketweave doesn’t distort the canvas nearly as much as its tent stitch cousins since it pulls the canvas both ways. All that thread on the back also means that this is a very durable stitch for rugs and upholstery. If you are going to sit or walk on your needlepoint, consider basketweave. However, it uses more thread than the other types of tent stitch. If you are worried about running out of thread, don’t do basketweave in more than a small area.

if you are left-handed, here’s how lefties do basketweave.

http://www.stitching.com/npg/bsktwve.htm

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

Autumn Leaves Plan of Attack

When planning how to stitch a piece entirely in tent stitches, usually you are told to start in either one corner or the middle. Personally, I think where you start depends on the actual design and the size of the piece and whether you are using scroll frames. Some patterns have big areas in the center; in that case I might stitch those first. Other designs, especially if you are doing the piece all in basketweave, work up well if you start in a corner and work diagonally to the opposite corner. If you use a scroll frame, you will probably also work this way since you need to stitch down a ways from the top, stop and roll the stitched area around the scroll frame at the top and unroll the unstitched canvas at the bottom to expose more area to work.

For Autumn Leaves we are going to try both ways of stitching. I’ll do the small brown leaf in the center and also start in one corner. We’ll compare the two plans of attack this way. But before we start, we need to talk about the tent stitches we can choose from.

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

Kreinik's 24 Ways UPDATED

Kreinik's website has just posted a new article in PDF form--24 Ways to Embellish a Needlepoint Canvas, by Suzanne Howren and Beth Robertson.

http://www.kreinik.com/

It promotes Kreinik's threads, of course, but that doesn't mean there aren't some great ideas there.

Thanks!

UPDATE: If you are having trouble finding the article, it's at the bottom right of the link. The title of the home page link is 24 Ways to Use Braid. Sorry for the confusion. I failed to notice that the link had a slightly different title than the article.

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

Autumn Leaves Colors and Threads

The Lani Autumn Leaves canvas I’m going to start stitching shortly contains nine colors and threads (above). Here’s the list of colors with what I bought to use for these colors.

bright red (Vineyard Silks Classics #C-006 Tomato)
medium and dark red-orange (Panache PN31 and PN30)
peach (Panache PN07)
medium and light lavender (Impressions 2055 and 2056)
dark brown (Mandarin Floss M886)
golden tan (Mandarin Floss M842)
ivory (Impressions 1146 or possibly Silk Lame Braid SL03)

I am considering adding a tenth color as a border--the very pretty peach and cream Impressions 172 Almond. There is also a possibility of an eleventh color-black. The red leaves’ veins and outline seems to be darker than the tan leaves’ dark brown. I haven’t decided whether I’ll play up this difference by using black silk Splender on the red or not.

Ten colors aren’t really that many (some Ehrman Tapestry and Elizabeth Bradley kits have 27 colors) but switching between even ten colors as you tent stitch can be daunting. Stay tuned and I’ll give you my best tips for starting and stopping so many colors. I plan to talk about each thread brand I use as I use it so folks who haven’t seen it can learn more about that thread and its properties. That’s why I included Panache, Vineyard Silks, Mandarin Floss and Silk Lame Braid. All are new threads in the last year or two, except for Mandarin Floss which I think has been out for three years.

By the way, some of the photos of the Autumn Leaves canvas make the brown leaves look green, but they are not. You can’t trust either cameras or computer monitors to get colors right.

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

Autumn Leaves Starting Line Thoughts: Framing Up

When I taught myself to needlepoint most people held their stitching in their hand without a frame or stretcher bars. Everyone wet and then blocked their finished needlepoint projects by pinning them to blocking boards. Some folks painted the back side of their canvas with rabbit glue to hold the shape after blocking. I knew some people used stretcher bars when they stitched, but I didn’t understand why--until I stitched my leopard spots pillow. It was fairly good sized, probably 13-14 inches square, stitched with Paternayan yarn in tent stitches (I used the continental version of tent stitch, which is notorious for pulling a canvas out of true) on penelope canvas. When I finished stitching it, it looked really nice except that the square was now a parallelogram. I blocked it three separate times, and as soon as the canvas was dry and off the blocking board, it reverted to the parallelogram shape, at least a little. I finally gave up on making the leopard canvas square and started putting my canvases on stretcher bars.

Stretcher bars do take some getting used to because holding a frame while you stitch is awkward, but many folks now also use a floor or table frame that takes over the job of holding the stretcher bars in position while you stitch with both hands. Some brands are heavier than others, so if you find stretcher bars too weighty, see if you can find the lighter weight, slimmer ones.

If you look at the photo of Autumn Leaves above you’ll see it’s stapled to fairly wide stretcher bars. I like the slim ones but my pair was in use already so I picked up the only brand available to me locally, the wide and heavy ones. I will probably stitch most of this piece in hand instead of putting this in my K’s metal floor frame. I save that for larger pieces. The piece itself is only 3 by 6 inches but the margins are very wide so it is on 8x10 stretcher bars.

You’ll also see that I turned the edge of the canvas over. I couldn’t get the next larger size of stretcher bars so I made do with what I could buy. Those of you in areas with many needlepoint shops will be able to buy just the sizes you need but many of us don’t have that luxury. It doesn’t make any difference to the stitching that I can see. I could have cut off the extra canvas to match to the size of my stretcher bars but since this is a teaching piece I thought I’d demonstrate various ways of handling the problem of a canvas slightly larger than the stretcher bars.

Many stitchers I know use thumbtacks to attach their canvas to the frame but since I can’t buy the big ones here, I use my staple gun. For me it works just as well, although one day I might treat myself to several boxes of the nice large thumbtacks and the tool to put them in and remove them. You can see the Corjac Thumbtack Kit here. Something very similar is called the EZ Tack It kit. I have seen the Corjac at Needlewoman East and it is very well made, so when I buy, that will be what I choose.

http://www.joann.com/joann/catalog.jsp?CATID=cat2887&PRODID=prd17161&AID=10273743&PID=2493916&_requestid=463078

or Tiny URL

http://tinyurl.com/6koqj9

Next time we’ll talk about the threads I choose for Autumn Leaves and after that where I plan to start stitching and why.

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

Autumn Leaves Starting Line Thoughts: The Paint Job

Before starting to stitch on Autumn Leaves, I want to talk a bit about painted canvas quality. Probably everyone here knows that the term “painted canvas” covers a wide area--from canvases that were computer printed or silk screened to hand painted or stitch-painted designs. So naturally the precision of the paint job depends on how a canvas was created. It is difficult for silk screened or computer printed canvases to go through the machinery perfectly straight, and NP canvas count isn’t always exactly so many threads per inch anyway. There is variation in the canvas, so the printed image put on it by machine isn’t going to be totally straight. Artists who don’t needlepoint themselves may do beautiful work but stitchers have problems trying to stitch a thin-lipped mouth, stitching something perfectly round, etc. Some areas may not be translatable into the NP grid. So a canvas painted by a real person is no guarantee that you won’t occasionally not know exactly what to do. “Stitch painted” canvases are created to avoid this problem. Each thread intersection is supposed to be totally covered in one color.

This may or may not matter to you, depending on your personality. Some folks are driven nuts by not knowing exactly where a line or color falls on a canvas. Some canvases’ hand painted lines are thicker or thinner according to how the brush was held, so some of the paint will not fall on a canvas intersection. It will be between a thread. How do you stitch that? How do you know where to put a red stitch when the red paint falls between two threads? If you look at the veins in the leaves above and also the edges, you’ll see that it isn’t always clear where to put the stitch for that dark line.

Actually, this is a really easy problem to handle. Give it your best guess, put in a stitch, put the canvas down and step back and look. Look ok? Then it is. Don’t like it? Pull it out and put that stitch in another location and check again.

I know some folks find this very annoying and simply don’t want to deal with a canvas that has an imprecise paint job. If you are one of these folks, ask your shop to help you discover which designers turn out stitch painted-canvases. If you limit your purchases to those, you will never have a problem. Everyone else should look very carefully at any painted canvas in good light before taking it home with you. Know the problems of that canvas first, then decide if it is the right design to spend your precious free time on.

However, this is advice easier to say than to follow. Everyone here has lost their heart to a canvas that wasn’t precisely painted. All I can tell you is to remember that needlepoint designs are not precise copies of images--they are artistic representations. You will not usually have a finished piece as detailed as a photograph. The eye of the viewer will put two and two together unconsciously and understand the image without thinking about it. Choose the thread intersection that looks best, try it, rip it out and redo if you don’t like the look, then keep stitching. Remember that you are holding your current project in your lap probably only a foot from your eyes. Once a project is framed or made up into a pillow, bystanders won’t see it up close like you do. You are going to notice problems more than regular passersby will.

We’ll talk more about deciding what color goes where as Autumn Leaves is stitched. The design falls on thread intersections fairly well as you can see in the close-up of the small red and tan leaves above, but there are curved veins where I’ll have to make a decision. And there are lines that are both thick and thin so I will have to decide whether to add stitches in that color to make a thicker line or not. When we get to a problem area, I’ll demonstrate how I proceed. Cleta, thanks for pointing out that this is something I needed to talk about!

P.S. Sorry it took so long for me to post the photo today. My home Internet connection kept cutting out on me and I was really REALLY busy at work today!

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

What Color is Your Ribbon?

I'm sure you have seen all those memorial samplers that folks stitched in the 18th Century with weeping willows, tombstones, urns, etc. They were in honor of someone dear who had died.

We don't do that sort of thing these days but we make colored ribbons like the pink one for breast cancer survivors. It's comforting for us to stitch something for a friend who is battling a serious illness.

Thanks to Sue Dulle I can send you to places to see what colors go with what illnesses and another link to find the DMC skein equivalent to get just the right shade. But before you follow the links on Sue's blog (see the May 4 entry), look at the small design she stitched for a friend. Those inchies are very nice!

http://sudukc.wordpress.com/

Thanks, Sue. Useful stuff. Most everyone has dear friends or family who could use a lift customized just for them.

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

Cinco de Mayo Crepe Paper Flowers

Are you having withdrawals now that Juanita the Mexican Lady's weekly stitching blog post is over? I am!

But Janet Moyer kindly sent a photo from the Cinco de Mayo celebration in San Diego Sunday that shows the big crepe paper flowers she wanted Juanita's flowers to resemble. She really did a good job with her version, didn't she?

So celebrate Cinco de Mayo with us and enjoy one last posting about The Mexican Lady.

(Thanks, Janet. The photo is lovely.)

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

Basket Mania

Baskets are big in Chilly Hollow. People in this area collect the Longaberger baskets and I was given a lovely hand-made Appalachian basket as a wedding present years ago. I used to keep my current project’s threads in it beside my stitching chair but now that we have two active dogs, It’s safely put away. Less temptation to grab a skein and run, right?

Fortunately for basket fans like me who need to keep their baskets safe, Kelly Clark has a series of painted canvases of various baskets that have started showing up in monthly clubs and classes here and there. I must say that these work up very nicely!

Two basket classes are going to be taught at Needle Nook of La Jolla the end of May. The illustration above is the Provence Picnic Basket from this class. Pretty nice, huh? The other basket is Christmas-themed. You can see them both here at the class description on the NN of LJ website.

http://www.needlenookoflajolla.com/events/classes.html#kellyclark

At least three other baskets (they seem to be Valentine’s Day, Spring Flowers, and Winter Knitter’s Baskets) are going to be monthly clubs at What’s the Point? starting next July. You can see them stitched here at the shop’s website. My favorite of all the baskets is the winter one with knitted items spilling out of it. Ok, which of you needlepointers who also knits wants to stitch this for me?

http://www.whatsthepoint.biz/

There’s no excuse for a basket-free zone in your home any more.


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

Spring Cleaning

No, I'm not spring cleaning, silly. I'm stitching, or I will be once I post this. The spring cleaning is being done by two online shops: Needles and Threads of Ruxton in Maryland and Old World Designs in California.

Both are favorite online destinations of mine and both have recently redone their websites slightly with new fun things you will enjoy (in case you need something to do besides cleaning out that closet and washing windows).

Needles and Threads of Ruxton is back with a revamped website. They still have the very nice stitch dictionary with lovely diagrams of some unusual and lovely stitches, but they've added Comments so you can interact with news stories. Sadly, most of the postings are spam right now, which is why the comments on my Blogspot blog are moderated and the comments on my Yahoo 360 blog are closed except to those with a Yahoo relationship of some kind. So ignore the comments until Needles and Threads has time to solve the spamming problem.

Instead, have a gander at these! They have thirteen pages of canvases to browse. I'm sure there is something there to catch your eye.

http://www.needlesandthreadsofruxton.com/f_product_display.php?s=4&id=4

Old World Designs has tweeked their website. They have added photos of the threads that they carry, especially helpful if you have no local shop and want to see before you mail order something. They have added one item you'll want to bookmark, or at least print out and put on your bulletin board--a chart of how many strands or plies you'll need on 13 count and 18 count canvas. They also are doing a Melissa Shirley Noah's Ark set as a monthly club with two canvases a month until September when you will have the ark to stitch together. By the way, don't miss the Terian Crafts section on their design list. Terian Crafts does lovely oriental rug and pillow patterns with wool from Chile on large count canvas. Their work is superb.

http://www.oldworlddesigns.com/

http://www.oldworlddesigns.com/ply.html

http://www.oldworlddesigns.com/artists/terian.html

Finally, Old World Designs is having a Julie Pischke trunk show. Julie has a shop in Key West and many of her designs reflect the laid-back lifestyle of the southern-most part of the continental United States. The canvas above is one of my favorites from her collection, "Island Gossip."

Yes, it's in my stash. Now put down that dust rag, shove the vacuum cleaner into the corner, put away the garden tools and sit down and choose a Julie canvas for yourself!

http://www.islandneedlepoint.com/


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