Achieving Halloween Elegance with Threads

Another way to make a Halloween piece more elegant than scary is in your choice of threads.  Use a fuzzy purple thread for witch's hair and you aren't going to turn her into Coco Chanel!  Use a silk and you have a better shot at making her look well turned out and menacing instead of like a clown dressed for trick-or-treat.  We all love Halloween but not everyone wants a silly canvas on their purse front so we have to adjust our stitching a bit for Smilin' Jack and similar canvases.

Silk from City Needlework

A friend sent me a sample selection of a new Chinese silk floss from City Needlework to try.  I used it on the olive green leaves of Smilin' Jack.  The silk strand is made of six plies and comes in a 6 meter skein (that's a bit over nineteen and a half feet).  Each ply comes out easily from the bundle and handles well.  The plies are slightly crinkled like a perle cotton in miniature so clearly they are not flat silk.  The silk feels good and the colors I have are handsome.  The City Needlework website shows a lot of colors available and $4 a skein for the 6 meter ones is a reasonable cost as silk prices go.  I don't know how colorfast it is.  I haven't tested the olive green I used.  This is a silk worth trying out to see what you think.  So far, my impression is positive but I have only used one color on a small area of one canvas.
http://www.cityneedlework.com/silk.html

If you happen to live anywhere near the San Mateo, CA shop, you might drop by and look at the colors and pick up a few to test.  Anyone with comments, please speak up in the Comments section or email me at chillyhollow at hot mail dot com so I can post a comment for you.  Thanks!

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com