Jade's Hair

In the photo above you can see Jade's hair stitched on top of the padding, using the Soy Fiber in long stem stitches that were staggered so that each one began or ended at a slightly different place than its neighbors. I tried to do the stitches in the same direction that real hair would go. Of course there are areas that the stem stitches couldn't fit, like the curls at the nap of her neck. The tent stitches done there cover the painted canvas and look ok.

By the way, this photo is color adjusted so you can see the black threads on the black painted area of the canvas better. It is really black in person!

The bows are finished also. The knot was painted in alternating stripes of light dusty pink (I used Kreinik's Soie Perlee #3333) and light blue (Thread Gatherer's Silk N Colors in Delphinium which is the thread used on the light blue parts of her robe), so I covered the stripes with long skinny cross stitches in those colors, then took my needle full of pink silk under the row of cross stitches to put a horizontal line under them. I did that because the skinny cross stitches didn't cover well. The pink cross stitch was done using Soie Perlee which is a skinny perle-type silk thread. Very pretty but it was too thin to cover entirely.

The ends of the pink and blue bows were done in outline stitch except for the tiny bit of blue ribbon on the left which was done in reverse tent stitches covering one or two thread intersections. I worked from the centers out using my light blue and light dusty pink but I needed a darker dusty pink and a darker blue, so I used the dark blue thread from the robe (Thread Gatherer's Flax N Colors in French Blue) and the darker purple-pink that I will use on the geisha's robe. That is Rainbow Gallery's Splendor in S1035. I used the Flax N Colors as it came off the card, the Soie Perlee in one perle thread, and two plies of the silk floss Splendor and Silk N Colors.

The bow itself is a bit fancy for a lady's maid but we have to remember that she dresses the geisha and is probably up on the latest fashions and rather skilled in fixing hair so I expect her vanity got the better of her.

I'm going to work on the geisha's robe but before I do, look at the last blog entry and check out the neckline of the maid's robe. Doesn't the left side look a bit jagged? I'm going to talk about why that happened and how I fixed it next.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow