While everyone is thinking over their vote (or trying to make the poll work--lots of folks are having trouble but not to worry, just post a comment here or email your vote to me at chilly hollow at hot mail dotcom), I added the background stitch to the ornament. I choose skip tent. I wanted something rather plain in the end. I did test all the background stitches you see on the right of the ornament first but kept coming back to the tent stitch family. I wanted a stitch that would work with either the crowns --which can be stitched right on top--or the fading lines from the plaid, more of which can also be worked on top. I also removed the thin silver line on the right side of the ornament which I never liked once I'd stitched it.
Right now it looks a bit tweedy. I may fill the empty spots between each skip tent stitch seen above with a tent stitch in my red holographic Kreinik or perhaps with crystal beads. (Or maybe I won't!) The thread I used is Rainbow Gallery's Elegance, which is a silk perle thread around the size of #8 cotton perle. The color is E822 which is a very pretty medium Christmas red that is slightly darker than the reds used in the plaid.
By the way, I stitched the lion's tongue a while ago and keep forgetting to nention it. The darker red base is tent stitches in my red holographic Kreinik #8 braid, and the lighter top is stem stitch in the bright red Trio. These are both threads used in the plaid area. In this instance I separated one of the three Trio bundles into half so I used one of the six strands you can separate this thread into. Ordinarily I just use of of the main three bundles but this I made smaller. There's not enough stitching to stress the thread enough to make it pull apart in the middle but I was pretty careful with my thread tension, just in case. Trio is really not intended to be divided into 6 sections.
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
2 comments:
Hi Jane - more beautiful work to watch! Thanks!
I like the skip stitch tent for the heathery look to it - appropriate for the heathery Highlands!
And, my personal choice would be to complete the tartan in all its glory and outline the rampant lion.
Slainte,
Meg van den Berg
Very nice!
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