Even though I have been busily adding a bit more coral to O'jishi's jaws and mixing backstitch and whipped backstitch around his jaw, I am going to have to stop this part and concentrate on the bumps on his face since they are very close to many of the areas I plan to backstitch. I've always planned to put beads on his face. Just how to do that was the next question. After all, beads can be attached many ways, and if I'd had access to lovely and small pallettes, I might have used them instead of beads.
Inspired by what NC Pat has been doing on her current Loretta Spears mystery piece, I am making baby bead cups to surround each bead. Pat's bead cup stitch is shown here-see how the third white border from the left has the pearls nesting among a sort of tiny Jessica stitch?
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKfC5wnDhfUwpp92O0K3Wmd-dFdDWKLelXVD5odLgTtgrqpeF0S1LKuPQZIM3wtb0fl_aTKuJfupBgO8zs7QTRJzC1xh2jrqT3Eq-tJHV0PefXIvJbHUzbit3tL-TgBqiUiB6Kuoa4-Lk/s1600-h/100_1253.JPG
By the way, here is the finished (but not framed yet) Mystery #10. Isn't it lovely?
http://needleartnut.blogspot.com/2009/12/end-of-mystery.html
Back to O'jishi's warts. The canvas bumps are almost all painted box shape containing 4 threads. This is perfect for putting a bead in the hole in the center of the threads inside a metallic framework. However, the bead cups Pat stitched seem to be over 6 threads. I have to work with a smaller space. So I came up with a baby bead cup stitch, not really much like what Pat was doing, but enough to make a little framework for my beads.
In the example above, the two red stitches below are the first step in the framework. You can see they are over two threads and make a sort of triangle shape. The shorter yellow stitches above cover the red stitches but they are not as long. Remember, my bumps are painted over four threads. So I had to make the second set of "legs" shorter. In the last stitched example, I've put a blue French knot in the center hole that the all yellow stitches frame. This is what I plan to do with O'jishi's warts. I used a French knot because I don't have any beads large enough to not fall right through a 10 count plastic canvas hole!
By the way, I used Kreinik #4 very fine braid in Kreinik's gold 002 for the warts. My next step will be to choose bead colors.
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
