How to Stitch a Dragon

The photo above shows my progress stitching my dragon rock jewelry piece.

To show you how I got there, here's a scan of my first step. I put my rock on the canvas scrap where I thought it would look ok, and drew around it with a blue quilting pen, then stitched all the way around my design area with tent stitches. This helps me in finishing later and shows me the margins to stop stitching as well as where the rock is. I don't want to put the rock on top of stitches so I'll avoid that round area. I want to nestle the rock down with stitches surrounding it and then decorate the edge with bullions.



Then I had to decide how to stitch a dragon theme around the rock. My first thought was the traditional dragon holding a pearl in one claw design, but when you combine such a small area with my drawing skills (less than a 4 year old's!), I decided that wouldn't work. Too bad, but how about an eye of a dragon? The rock could be the pupil....

Again, I decided I didn't have enough room to adequately convey what I was aiming for. I was going to have to settle for dragon scales. I thought about doing something random in all sizes of oval stitches to mimic dragon scales since Laura Perin's Pacific Tide Pool class piece that shows random sea creatures (look at the June 11 entry in the link below) turned out so well.

http://two-handedstitcher.blogspot.com/

But in the end I choose a trellis pattern (based loosely on Marnie Ritter's Composite Flat Pattern #2 from the March/April 1991 Needlepoint Plus magazine), laid out my grid, stitched the triangle shapes and then started filling in the empty areas with a variety of threads and textures. I used a peach/tan/cream overdyed Impressions #172 Almond, some #4 Kreinik braid in blue #329, my new Silk Lame Braid #SL03 which is cream silk and gold metallic, and of course the shades of Splendor and copper metallic I've already mentioned. I hope it looks a bit like dragon scales. I like how it's turning out. Once I finish laying the top grid of copper metallic (it's finished on the right side of the triangle in the photo but not the left) then I can attach by dragon rock at just the right angle, fold under the edge margins and finish it.



This has taken about 4 hours of stitching to date (we had a cloudburst yesterday so I stitched instead of doing yardwork) and I estimate it will take 6-8 hours from start to finishing. That's not a long period of time, especially for a piece of jewelry.

Odette writes she has a "cherry blossom" rock slab that she's going to play around with. Hopefully she'll be able to send us a photo when she is done!

Before I end, let me update you on the Internet connection problem. The phone company sent a repairman yesterday who managed to get all the static off the line for about two hours. Then we got a downpour and the static is back, worse than ever. I'm on a waiting list for a rush repair in the next 2-3 days since even Verizon agrees that phones should work in the rain. In other words, my posting is still going to be somewhat spotty for the next week or so at least. Sorry.

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