Robe, Trunk, Staff, Sleeves, Globe

PURPLE ROBE

I’ve been busy on small areas on the wizard canvas while I thought about how to handle the purple under-robe area. I ripped out the first stitch I use here, although I liked it, because it wouldn’t work with the stitch I plan for the blue over-robe. Oh, well. In the large photo above, you see the first step of the purple robe stitch. It’s just long diagonal lines in my two shades of purple Impressions. I switch colors to match the shading of the paint underneath. I plan to tie down the long lengths of threads with either more Impressions or silver metallic or both. Stay tuned on that.

As you can see, I started stitching the traveling trunk that holds the wizard’s magic supplies (and probably a clean pair of wool socks). I used the new Vineyard Silks that has metallic woven in to tent stitch the dark brown shading of the trunk. The trunk and the wizard’s staff both have three shades of brown—dark chocolate, milk chocolate and a brown shade in between. I probably need to pick up two more shades of Vineyard Silks in the non-metallic Classic line for the other two shades as I don’t really have anything the right color in a similar texture here in my stash. Looking at the online color card, probably Bark, Monk’s Robe or Dark Earth will work, especially if combined with Rattan.

http://www.vineyardsilk.com/CLASSICgallery/index_3.htm

I used short lengths of the Vineyard Silks Shimmer (color-Truffle) as the cut ends unravel slightly. You will need to tie off this thread a little further from the needle’s eye than normal as it will unravel as you stitch. I used a slightly larger needle eye, too. I did not have any trouble with the brown metallic woven into this silk strand fraying, however. Some people reported that problem when the thread first came out, but it looks like that issue’s been solved.

I attached the brass charm that goes on the front of the trunk just to the left of where it actually goes in the picture so you can compare the charm to the painted lock area, which is larger. I am attempting to illustrate the problems you run into with kits that have charm sets. Sometimes you can’t buy the attachments for various reasons or maybe you won’t want to use them. The needlepoint designer will paint the canvas so that those who don’t use the charms can stitch the item instead. So I had to decide whether to use the brass lock or not. I like how it looks, so I am going to use it, but that means I have to stitch right over the brass paint area underneath (which is larger than the charm) with my brown trunk threads. That won’t be a problem if I used tent stitches for the entire trunk. Because the brass lock also fits right over the metallic trim edges of the trunk, I also have to use a stitch there that doesn’t raise the charm up so much it looks funny. I also caused myself another problem—I decided to make the trim gold instead of silver, so I had to match the brassy gold of the charm to a thread the same shade. Luckily I have a card of Fyre Werks in Soft Sheen #FT15 which is very close in color. In the photo you will see most of the trim done but I waited to finish it so you could see that I first padded the area with a bit of leftover Impressions, then did straight stitches on top to make the gold brass trim slightly rounded.

WIZARD’S STAFF

The next photo shows the sleeves, the Earth under the wizard’s arm, and his staff. My kit came with a crystal to attach to the top of the staff, and like the trunk’s brass lock, I needed to decide if I wanted to use the crystal bead or not. I decided not to, and instead stitched the oval area at the top of the staff with more Fyre Werks, this time the Hologram Ribbon in FH2, which is very shiny silver with green and gold highlights. I tried to use an oval-shape Jessica stitch but my shape wasn’t regular. I ended up abandoning the Jessica in the bottom half and just doing long stitches that went around the perimeter and ended in the center hole. I have a dimpled center, which will be the perfect place for a bead later. Once most of the canvas is done, I’ll decide whether to us a smaller crystal there or a colored bead. I don’t have enough of the design done to know how colors will interact so I can’t make a good choice here yet.

SLEEVES

I have continued to work on the sleeves, although I haven’t managed to couch the silver lines across the right sleeve. See the dark purple shadow inside the lighter purple sleeve? That is the darker plum purple impressions in tent stitches. After I did both sleeves, I added slanted long stitches in the lighter purple Impressions. That was harder as I needed to do the lines slanting at the correct angle. That took some planning, some lines in pencil on my black and white copy of the canvas and a few lines pulled out when they didn’t look just right. But I’ve achieved what I wanted—a sleeve that has three levels of dimension (and will have four when the blue outside robe is stitched. You have the least prominent dark shadow in purple, the lighter purple inner sleeve more dominant and then the arms in their fancy blue and silver which are the most raised of all.

GLOBE

The Wizard carries a globe under his arm along with a sliver of moon and some stars. I have charms for the moon and stars, so I decided I needed to do the earth in something that could hold its own against all that shine of gold and silver attachments. I wanted to bead the earth but didn’t have the petite sized beads in the right colors. Instead I ended up tent stitching the earth in Kreinik metallics, size #8 Fine Braid. The green is the very pretty 008C and the blue water is 006. I stitched the grid lines on top using black Coronet Braid, size 4. (The color is 51B.) I think perhaps this thread is a bit heavy but I like the subtle metallic shine, so I’ll leave this for now.

I like how the wizard is shaping up, but I still have a lot of work to do on him. I've been trying to do more stone wall behind him occasionally and I must finish the flagstone floor and the right sleeve, then start on the next step for the purple robe. Stay tuned!

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