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| Smilin' Jack Started Out All Beads |
Smilin' Jack himself has beads scattered throughout his stitches. When it comes to high impact, only Swarkovski crystals and sequins give you more bang for the stitch than beads. If you don't overdo it, you get an elegant effect. Since Jacques (the beads have gone to his head and The Squash thinks he's French royalty) needs to be elegant --that's a hallmark of Leigh Designs-- I was relatively restrained with the beads. Not that Smilin' Jack started out this way. At first I started to totally bead him using Don Lynch's (Associated Talents) woven bead stitch. That's what you see in the photo above. But it was Too Much, so out all the beads came. Instead I used the technique that Sundance Designs describes in their little Sundance Beads for Needlepoint pamphlet. I substituted beads for some of the elements of my chosen stitch.
Beads can be substituted in any stitch that is made up in part by tent stitches. Look at this stitch from the ANG Stitch of the Month pages--
http://www.needlepoint.org/StitchOfTheMonth/1999/99-01.php
You can substitute beads for the two tent stitches that flank the longer middle stitch. You could put a bead in the middle where four Mosaic Stitches meet. You could even substitute a bead at random for a tent stitch here and there. Or substitute a string of beads for the longer stitch that the tent stitches flank. There are a LOT of beading possibilities with just this one stitch. Sundance's little book diagrams twenty-five stitches they mix beads into in the back of their book. That's what got me thinking about substituting beads for the tiny basic tent stitch.
If you want more information about Sundance's booklet, here's the review I wrote in 2009 when it first came out and I got my hands on a copy.
http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com/2009/03/book-review-sundance-beads-for.html
A quick Google search this morning brought up two websites with Sundance's booklet in stock. There are probably many more but I simply used the first two links that appeared in my search if you want a copy of the little book.
http://www.needlepointtooltime.com/product/SB
http://www.amybunger.com/catalog/item/6268582/6868467.htm
Happy beading! Now I need to finish the first step of a leaf before working a bit more background.
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
