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
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