Making a Boring Border Better

I didn't mention several things when I posted about the Cape Cod Dogs window yesterday. If you looked closely at the photograph then, you saw I'd already finished the inside red border (tent stitches in the silk perle Elegance) and added a new element to the border--an outside red line, broader than the thin one on the inside edge of the border. The success I had padding Ch'ing the Chinese Red Dragon's face with Very Velvet meant I wanted to try padding again, especially when Carole emailed me about her current Melissa Shirley Santa stocking (photo above).




Carole used Petite Very Velvet as padding under her stocking top. She says, "I used the Petite Very Velvet to pad and then did Ribbon Floss over it. The holding power of the PVV is awesome. My Ribbon Floss has never looked better--you can't see the individual threads. It stands up just little above the PVV background in the blue."

Carole has a second similar Melissa Shirley mini stock with a pink and white peppermint top and plans to stitch it the same way. This looks great, doesn't it? Cape Cod Dogs isn't quite as gorgeous (I don't have any red ribbon floss and believe me, I looked!) so I laid down a long line of red Very Velvet around the edge of the original black border and have been stitching slanted stitches over it using all 6 plies of a card of red Mandarin Floss. It looks very nice in person and gives the border a very nice touch. Of course I still have tons of boring background to stitch, but at least with the Very Velvet padding it looks very nice. Here's a closeup from yesterday's photo.



Wish me luck finishing the last black border background, the red lettering and the padded red border all around the outside.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow