I'm making great progress on the Blue Angel. First, her hair. It is stitched in packed stem stitch and packed outline stitch (the needle is on the right or left, depending on which side of her face I'm working on, which changes the stitch name). using the same Wildflowers (Caron) that I used for the French knot curls on the Baby Jesus' hair in the Red Madonna piece. The color is 196 Sable, which is a mix of black and dark brown. In the photo above the right side of the hair is done. You can see I added bullions here and there on top of the outline/stem stitches to raise the bangs or indicate curls on her choulders. On the left side there are no bullions yet. Because Wildflowers is a thin perle cotton thread (you can see a strand of it on the canvas on the left), I found I could make fat bullions by using 15 or so wraps and tiny skinny ones with only 8 wraps.
Once the hair was finished, I moved on to the collar. I added a bit of blue Sparkle Braid #SK19 on top of my tent stitches to add a bit of embellishment, then stitched a row of clear Toho crystal beads (size 11/0) on top around the neckline. They barely show up in the photo and in real life but you can sense the sparkle, always a good thing for an icon and a Christmas ornament in my opinion.Next I did the inner part of the halo, using ribbon floss as I did with Red Madonna. But this time I used Shimmer Blend #148F-32 Smoke Blu/Blu which is a lovely shade that coordinates with her robe. I used the same thread in long stitches on her wings. The gaps where the pairs of stitches meet will be filled with a bead, probably a crystal one like the ones on her neckline.
I used the same thread for tent stitches in the framework over her head, again the same thing I did for the Red Madonna, but in another color. Now I've started outlining the wings. On the left wing you see regular (not Shimmer Blend) white ribbon floss ##142-F2 White. Last night I wasn't happen with the long white stitches which I had to stitch twice (one stitch right on top of the ones that looked skimpy) so I used Kreinik's medium #16 braid in o33 on the right wing in long and skinny cross stitches. This morning I like the white wing edging better than the blue!
Guess I'll think this one over. It may be that natural light is kinder to the white wing tips and electric light kinder to the blue wing tips. Since this is a Christmas ornament, I may go with the metallic blue. These sorts of pieces will be seen in artificial light from the Christmas tree probably. I think I'll start working on the halo's outside edge while I mull this one over. Any opinions?
Jane/Chilly Hollow
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