Enter Brenda Hart, Girl Genius

Do you remember when I was working on the Joan Thomasson Wizard Santa for Christmas that I used some of the new Baroque Silk for the silver beard and for the black felt slippers Santa wore? Baroque Silk is a lightly twisted perle silk thread, suitable for 13 count canvas as is, but you can also untwist the plies into three sections and use 1-2 of them on 18 count. Which is what I did on the Wizard Santa. Here are good photos of the colors available for this thread.
http://www.needlestack.com/WebStore/Thread/TPP_BaroqueSilk.html

Barbara Bergstein's blog has photos of the red Baroque Silk she is using on her tropical fish project. The second photo shows the red Baroque Silk in its tiny skein and the third and fourth are closeups of Barbara holding the entire strand and then the separated plies ready to use on 18 count.
http://createneedlepoint.typepad.com/create_needlepoint/2009/03/tropical-fish.html

My conclusion when I stitched the Wizard Santa using Baroque Silk was that the grays were pretty but nothing different than any other thread for beards, and that the white bits that show up when you untwist the black ply make it not a good choice for 18 count canvas. I had to stitch over sections of the black Chinese slippers to hide the white bits. I suppose the thread is twisted and then dyed, so the dye doesn't penetrate the whole thread, giving a slightly shaded area or even a white streak when you use a ply or two of the whole thread on 18 count.

And there my opinion rested. Until Brenda Hart arrived, picked up Baroque Silk and worked her magic.

My friend Janet takes a regular class from Brenda Hart at Needle Nook of La Jolla. Janet's stitching a large piece and Brenda came up with a fabulous border for her design which Janet told me about. Janet raved about the stitch and thread Brenda told her to use and even sent me a skein in blue with a matching metallic to try it out with. The thread was --you guessed it!-- Baroque Silk.

I looked at my brand new skein of blue Baroque Silk, remembered that Brenda Hart wrote the stitch dictionaries I use all the time, thought about what a good stitcher Janet is, then took a deep breath and tried to copy what Brenda taught Janet on a sample of canvas. Luckily I had some of the black and gray Baroque Silk still I used last fall (it was borrowed from Pat, who is as big a threadaholic as I am) and tried all three colors in various combinations on my 18 count canvas in just the way Janet instructed.

This is what Janet said Brenda Hart told her to do--First, take a length of Baroque Silk apart into its three separate strands. Then carefully lay the crinkly strands in a long diagonal line of five separate stitches, not pulling the threads so tightly that the crinkles disappear. Follow this with five diagonal stitches in a matching color of metallic thread. Then repeat, alternating between the Baroque Silk and the metallic threads, for the entire border.

You get a marbled effect with the Baroque Silk, and the metallic contrasts with the matte silk beautifully. It is GORGEOUS. In the photo above you see my blue Baroque silk paired with a blue Sparkle Braid, some of my gray Baroque Silk with silver Kreinik stitched beside and on top of the gray stitches, and some of my black stitched in a long figured stitch next to black Kreinik in the same stitch slanting the other way. I also added a length of my blue Baroque Silk with one end unraveled and the other as it comes off the skein so you can see the difference.

Speaking of the black Baroque Silk, I should mention that this shows up fancy stitches beautifully if the stitches are long ones as in the test stitches I used. There is a lot of shine to it which will enable us to stitch fancy stitches in black and not lose the detail that normally vanishes when you stitch in black. The trick is to use long straight stitches to give the Baroque Silk room to reflect the light.

I was wrong about Baroque Silk. Use it in the right circumstances paired with its soul mate, metallics, and you have something really beautiful. Note that I discovered that on 18 count, you only need two of the three strands that make up one ply of Baroque Silk. Janet's piece is on 13 count, so she needed all three of her strands to cover.

Janet kindly sent me a closeup of her Baroque Silk & metallic border.


The color isn't true on this piece (I tinkered with the image to make it easier to see the stitches) but it shows what an elegant side border Baroque Silk mixed with metallic threads makes. This is Melissa Shirley's large large armadillo canvas. It is on 13 count so Janet used all three plies of the Baroque Silk to add a lavender section outside the wide bird-flower-tree branch border.

Many thanks to Janet Moyer for drawing this to my attention, forcing me to try it with threads she provided and sending a photo for you to see, and to Brenda Hart for graciously allowing me to reveal one of her tricks here.

Brenda, you are amazing!

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