Dragon's Head

This week I've been stitching Ch'ing the Chinese dragon's head. It hasn't taken me very long (the head itself is not much longer than my thumb) but I needed a series of photographs to explain how I'm stitching him. The first photo above is a close up of Ch'ing's face. The eyebrows are stitched, using my dark red/brown Soie d'Alger #9197 silk which is what was used for the dividing lines on the checkerboard background, in packed stem stitched to match the arches above his eyes. You also see padding over his nose, above his mouth, and in the red patches along his cheek and above his head. I used a strand of red silk perle for the padding. Then Pat made a chance remark in Blog's comments that she'd heard Very Velvet was great for padding.


A light bulb went off over my head, I ripped out the silk perle padding and replaced it with red Very Velvet. This Rainbow Gallery thread is great when you need to have stitches that look like a velvet coat and it comes in two sizes--regular and Petite Very Velvet. Since I wanted the maximum loft, I used the larger regular Very Velvet size. In the photo above you see the padding in place and that I've started to wrap the nose padding with four strands of red silk (Splendor #S820). Doing straight stitches over the padding gives the nose ridge definition.


The next picture above shows the padding covered by the red Splendor silk in all the areas. The silk was carefully laid with a laying tool to keep it as smooth as possible. What you can't see well is that I've tent stitched the inside of the dragon's mouth. The red in his mouth is more of my Splendor (3 plies this time), the gold is some of the regular gold Treasure Braid (8 strand) #TR83 used on the ornament hanger metallic top, and the black is Kreinik #005 in size #8 braid.

The dragon's eyes and the white areas to each side of his mouth are stitched in Gloriana silk floss #190 Winter White. The eyes were done in 4 plies of this lovely silk, and once I had the straight stitches over the whites of his eyes, I did them again right on top of the first straight stitches. Since the whites of the dragon's eyes are a small area, I didn't pad them before putting in the straight stitches. The white mouth areas are tent stitches, again in 4 plies. Once I finished stitching the white areas, I filled the red eyes themselves with red beads, using Mill Hill Glass Seed Beads in color #02103. I finished the eyes by adding a gold bead in the center from my Sundance gold beads used on the gold scales, but I wouldn't do this again. Somehow the gold bead doesn't show up against the shine of the red ones. Color magic will sometimes make things invisible that should be visible.


This photo shows the black head of the dragon underway. I used packed stem stitch for the head and whiskers, using Kreinik's #005 black in three sizes, depending on the area I was working on. The head itself was done in the largest size, #16 braid. Once I had "colored in" the large areas of the head in #16, I switched to the smaller #8 fine braid to do narrower areas like above the eyebrows or the tips of the black fins. In a few cases at the very tips of the whiskers I switched sizes again, going down in size to #4 very fine braid. Once an area was stem stitched with the black Kreinik, I'd check to see if I needed to add a stitch or two on the top. When doing stem or outline stitch with a metallic thread, you will find areas that look a bit skimpy that need another stitch on top. Or you may find your thread isn't exactly positioned where you want it and you have to couch the thread into a slightly different position with a tiny stitch done in the #4 very fine braid.


The close up above shows the black fins on the dragon's body partly stitched. Again, I started with the largest black Kreinik. I put stem stitches in the large areas as you see, then went back later and added more stem stitches with my smaller #8 fine braid to fill out the tips of the curves and put a bit more thread in skimpy areas. This is not hard to do. Think of it as shading a coloring book with a pencil. Just fill in the area with your color using stem stitches instead of a Crayon!


This final photo is of Ch'ing to date. I've not finished the spine fins (the close up above comes from this photo) but this will give you a sense of what I'm doing. You can see in this photo and in the closeup that I went around the outside perimeter of the design with 1-2 tent stitches, using the main red silk (Soie d’ Alger #2925) from the checkerboard background, to make the edge smooth. Note that I did not use red silk for the outside tent stitches in the area of the body. I used my vintage gold Petite Treasure Ribbon #PR30 there as I thought red stitches outside that area would look odd.

This weekend I hope to tackle the fire the dragon is breathing. Once I finish stitching that area, Ch'ing will be complete!

In other news, I've finished three sides of the tent stitched border background on Cape Cod Dogs. I've also done the red letters in those three sides in cross stitches. As I work that piece I am thinking about what stitches and threads to use in other areas. If you look at the photo on the left you'll see the border corners have shells and some coral or seaweed as decoration. I'm going to wait to work on those as I will probably use the same threads there that will be used in those colors in the main design. Since I've not decided what threads go in the center yet, I'll wait to do the corners.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
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