"Frogs" are the knot closures you see on clothing. Here is a large selection, all quite fancy.
http://www.voguefabricsstore.com/store/catalog/Chinese-Frog-Closures-orderby0-p-1-c-182.html
I wanted to create a frog for the outside of the Joan Thomasson wizard's blue robe. These are a bit too fancy as the area I'm working in is quite small but you get the idea.
Using two of my Sweetheart Tree paillettes and a bit of my blue Accentuate, I stitched down the paillettes as if they were buttons, one on either side of the edge of the robe, coming up in the center hole and going down at the edge three times with each stitch spaced equally. These tiny stitches are almost invisible because the Accentuate is thin and the same blue as the background stitches.
By the way, this stitch is a mosaic variation from Brenda Hart's first book. Now you know why ANG just gave her the Literary Award for 2008!
In the close-up photo on the right you can see everything a bit better. The second step was for me to connect the two paillettes with two strands of silver Petite Treasure Braid. I had real trouble with color here. The background of the robe is blue so all the pretty blue metallics I chose for this area disappeared into the background. I tried purple but that was too strong against blue, so I ended up with silver threads. I had thought I might do the gold trim in blue the same way the silver and lilac trim is handled on the purple under-robe but I think now I've locked myself into using silver. Blue trim won't look as good as silver would now that my frog is silver.
There are a ton of ways to create frogs. You can couch elaborate shapes like the samples on the Vogue page, you can use lazy daisy knots connected by a straight line, you can use tiny buttons or sequins or paillettes like I did here. A lot depends on the canvas you have and the space you have to work with. Our wizard has a simple frog but he's a simple guy.
I stitched a few silver stars on his robe with my Petite Treasure Braid after I took the photo above. I am not sure I like them so I will look at them again when it's daylight and see what I think.
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
