Before And After Border

To recap, here are before and after photos of the Melissa Shirley mermaid.  You can see that adding a border frames this little design.  If I were doing the entire series of her little seaside ornaments, I wouldn't do a border, but since I am only stitching one and it is to cover the pocket on a purse, a border helps fill the empty space and gives me a place for the initials of the Birthday Girl.

In this photo the fish has been stitched except for the pink dots and red smile.  I paired my peach Silk Lame Braid with a similar color in Impressions so that the fish is sparkling some places but not others.  I plan to add pink beads to the pink dots but not until later on.

Note that I stitched the area around the monogram in tent stitches using just the pink Impressions from the wave bargello border.  I thought about using the sparkly pink Silk Lame Braid in the right areas but decided that might be too distracting behind the letters.

I've also started the bra in this photo, using a few surface lines of the red silk perle Elegance.  I'm also testing hair stitches, doing a chain stitch in Kreinik's holographic gold.  I don't much like how it looks, though.  The sky behind the mermaid is all regular Kreinik.  I see that using two shiny threads don't allow the hair to stand out against the sky.  I'll be pulling out the gold holographic hair and digging around in my stash for another thread for the hair.

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