As you can see, I have been busy. The mermaid tails have their beads (fewer on the background mermaid as she is further away and smaller, so needs to be less prominent), the small background, dog has his outlining and mouth, and I've started the hair of the bleached blonde mermaid in the center of the canvas.
I didn't finish last night--she needs longer hair in back--but I stopped where I did and left a thread hanging to point out the zigzag look of the blonde's face where it meets the bar. I didn't notice this until it was pointed out to me, probably because I was obsessing with the zigzag look of the arm of the mermaid in the background.
I fixed the smaller mermaid's arm by just doing a small \ with only 2 plies of silk (I used 4 plies for the arm stitches in the beginning) on top of the dark background tent stitches that looked like they needed smoothing out. Usually that is enough to at least convey the illusion of a smooth arm. Sometimes you can add one more tent stitch in the zigzag but that didn't seem to work in this case as the arm is too small. Another tent stitch made it too fat for the rest of the figure. UPDATE: If you want to compare the zigzag arm on the little mermaid now to my earlier attempt, look at the image in the August 9th Preparing for the Hairdresser entry below.
The larger mermaid's face also has this problem but I'm going to see if I can fix it another way. I'm going to put strands of blonde hair (this is Vineyard Silk, remember?) along her face. That's why the strand of "blonde" Vineyard Silk is hanging beside her face. That's my starting point. Well, it might be the finishing point. I'm not sure yet. I just pulled the thread through to show you the area I was speaking about. Some folks are really bothered by the zigzag effect on faces but there are several ways to adjust tent stitches to minimize the effect. You can't always get rid of it completely (like the mermaid arm, which is not completely smooth) but you can make it a lot less noticable.
We'll see tonight how it looks.
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
6 comments:
You have indeed been busy! I think "Fritz" (the smaller dog) is so cute!
hi Jane....try sometime doing faces and other skin in split stitch (silk 0f course); you might like it. Directional split would be good, like in traditional church embroidery, but even straight across rows, down 1, up 2, will work
Ginger in PA
GREAT idea, Ginger! Why didn't I think of that? I've admired a great many religious embroideries in the English style and they all have split stitch faces. Thank you!
Fritz?! What a cute name. Thank you, Pat. Fritz he is. However, all the finishing touches on the dog and the beaded tail areas for the mermaids are pretty small so it all only took 2-3 hours.
Funny Fritz the dog story I have to share. Years ago in my previous life (with ex) I did daycare in my home. One of the kids in my care was a 1st grader named Fritz. At one point, my brother was dog sitting and asked me to dog sit the dog he was dog sitting. He and his wife were having a party and they didn't want their guest dog to freak out and get lose. Of course I said yes, because being a schnauzer lover, I couldn't say no to dog sitting Fritz the schnauzer. So Thursday, my bro drops off Fritz the dog. Friday morning before school Fritz the dog is freaking out because he's in a strange house with strange dogs and more kids under the age of 12 than he's ever seen. He was hyper, wouldn't stop following me and I was afraid I was going to trip over him, fall down and smush him to death. I finally looked down at Fritz the dog and said in a very exasperated voice "Fritz, go lay down!!!" I went about my business of telling my kids to hurry up and get dressed, eat their breakfast, etc. A few minutes later I noticed Fritz the kid laying on the living room couch. Being the good (and licensed) day care provider that I was, I ran to him right away and put my hand on his head to check for a fever. "are you okay? don't you feel good? why are you on the couch?" I asked. Fritz the 1st grader looked up at me with tears in his eyes and said "you yelled at me and told me to go lay down". I felt so bad. He had missed the introduction that morning of Fritz the dog meet Fritz the human and didn't even realize there was another schnauzer running around.
Poor little Fritz. The person, I mean. But it is a very cute story.
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