Pears, Beads, and Backgrounds

Yesterday I got quite a lot finished on the little blue bow canvas from SharonG thanks to a wait in the dentist's office.  I first tent stitched the deep blue bow interiors using 4 plies of cotton floss from Carrie's Creation.  The color is Royal Blue.  Then I outlined the ribbon edge using Kreinik's holographic gold 002L in size 8 braid, again in tent stitches.  Moving on to the rest of the blue ribbon and bow, I used an overdyed silk perle from Gloriana for the darker blues and a cotton perle from House of Embroidery for the lighter blues, manipulating the colors so that the right part of the overdye shades fell in the right areas.  Both perles were roughly size 8.  The Gloriana silk perle was a test dyeing of a blue shading into purple overdye a friend got from the owner of Gloriana for me so it's not something one can buy.  The cotton perle from House of Embroidery was a set of three perle threads (black, the overdyed blues I used here, and a pretty solid sky blue) sent from South Africa that aren't numbered as to color, but Morning Glory looks a lot like the overdyed perle I used on this canvas.
http://www.houseofembroidery.com/col_chart/perle.asp 

Once the bow was finished (all in basketweave or half cross stitches), it was time to move to the background.  I originally intended to just add beads here, and using a long doubled strand of gold Accentuate, I added the beads along diagonal rows.  The beads I used are from Sundance and are small, round and very pretty.  They are size 14 and color 465.  I love them! They look just like the round candy nonpareils you can get to sprinkle on cakes.

Once I had most of the beads in, I realized that they didn't look good on bare canvas, so despite how much I like the white iridescent look of the canvas, I started basketweaving the background using Kreinik's 032C, which is the opalescent white in cord.  I will finish the basketweave today and start the finishing of this small piece into a name tag for a special present for my mother.

I'm sure by now you are wondering where the "pears" of the title come in.  Actually, I discovered from the Needlepointer's latest email that Kelly Clark has a pear club page on her website that shows photos of all the canvases in this monthly canvas series she is running, and tells one which shops are participating.  I thought you'd like to see it.
http://kellyclarkneedlepoint.com/clubs_pear

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