Yesterday I finished the red crown. To do so, first I added a few tent stitches to the empty spaces on each side of the crown and in the middle with my Elegance silk perle. The skip tent background was showing there and I thought it would look odd because of Step Two. The second step was to attach crystal hex beads (I used Sundance size 14 beads in color #250) with a doubled ply of my royal blue Sullivans Floss. That helped the beads stand out a bit. In the photo the red crown doesn't show up much against the red skip tent background but in person the metallic shine makes it pop off the background. Using blue thread to attach the beads makes them stand out, too. Notice that I slanted the beads on the right using reverse tent stitches and did the beads on the left in tent to slant them the other way. The center column of beads were attached straight up and down in a row.
This stitched sample on 10 count plastic canvas shows how the crown was done. The white stitches are the left to right row I stitched. The brown stitches are the second row I worked right to left. I stitched this on top of the skip tent background, so the next step was to add tent stitches to the empty right/left/center spaces inside the crown with my background thread so that they were completely stitched. (This is not shown above for clarity.) Then I attached beads on top of the tent and skip stitches. The green thread shows how the beads were attached with different slanting threads to make them turn or stand upright. I found this darning stitch diagrammed on page 101 of SuZy Murphy's book entitled SuZy's Darn Stitches.
Then I took my red Elegance silk perle and put 2 tent stitches all the way around the perimeter of the ornament to help the finisher.
The last thing I did last night was to attach rows of yellow beads to the ornament's metallic hanger. I used the same yellow beads that make up the yellow stripes in the plaid and the same DMC yellow floss I used there to attach them. The rest of the hanger will be stitched with the threads I will use on the lion.
By the way, Leigh Richardson herself suggested I use gold for the crown instead of red. She thought that gold would be lighter than the red and I could put a gold crown in above the tail. I may try that but I may not. I am very happy with the canvas as it is but when the designer has an idea, it is always worth serious consideration and I thought someone else stitching the Stuart Plaid Lion might want to use gold crowns in the background.
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
