Dog's Head Morning

Here's a closeup of the floral halo on Holi's head. I basically did a flower at the left end, the middle and then the right end of the halo and filled in with other flowers. If you squint, you can see that some flowers are on top of the halo, some have parts behind the halo, and some are a bit to the side. Starting from the left end of the couched length of Kreinik #32 briad that is the gold bit of the halo, here's what I did:

The red flower was the first one I did. It's in my red Patina thread, but with the perle untwisted and only one part used (I believe Patina divides into three main parts when you unwind it although it is a lot of long filaments and will divide much further). The petals are lazy daisy stitch. The center of the red flower is a bullion in red silk (Splendor if I remember correctly).

The orange flower on top of the red lazy daisy is the last flower I did. It's partly on top of the red one. It is made of two bullions done in the same overdyed yellow and orange Kreinik that is on the boxy overskirt. I love metallic thread bullions, especially in the Kreinik overdyeds! I made sure the bullions were a little longer than would lie smoothly on my fabric so they would curve. I wanted two semi-circles (or as close as I could get) so that I could put beads in the center. The beads are Petite Mill Hill gold beads, again on a short length of thread so they'd not lie flat. I think I added a last bead on top since the mass of beads (all strung on one length of thread) had an empty spot.

The purple flower is the second one I stitched. I used my purple Splendor silk to add three long stitches in roughly a lily shape, then used a single ply of pink silk from my leftover ends to make a French knot on a stalk (I keep the longer bits I cut off until a piece is finished so I can do a single missed stitch from them if necessary). I had to wrap the French knot twice to get a knot large enough to stay on top of the canvas since I was usuing a single ply of silk. Most experienced stitchers say to control the size of your French knot by the thickness of your thread instead of making many wraps of the needle. The base of the purple flower has two more curved bullions in green floss I had for leaves. I ended up finding a single pink bead on the floor near my stitching chair and plonked it between the leaves. It made a nice finishing touch somehow. I guess I was thinking of all the beads I used for hair ornaments on the geishas that are the header and background of Blog now.

The next flower is a coral ribbon rose done with floss. I made five spokes to my wheel, then went over/under the spokes as I circled the center of the "rose." This is also called a spider web stitch. There are a lot of variations of this basic concept, usually based on the number of spokes you use and exactly how you circle them with your thread. This was the next to last flower I stitched as it is partly on top of the last flower on the right.

The last flower on the right end of the halo is actually a small gold sequin topped with an orange bead. I was doodling almost when I tried this. I added green silk (one ply) to tie down the sequin further and add some color as the orange bead didn't reflect it's color on the gold sequin as much as I thought it would. I was afraid the gold sequin would disappear into the gold halo thread underneath. I added two more gold beads at the perimeter of the sequin eventually.

And that's how dogs get floral halos. It's a pretty haphazard process as I tried various things and almost doodled the flowers but you can always rip out. I did decide that the Wisper was a pain when doing flowers on top of it as the long fuzzies would get into my stitches or hide the flower. I ended up trimming fuzz away from the coral rose as it was plainly visible on top of the flower.

I'm busy with the tent stitch background now.

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