Straw Silk, the Lists

Straw Hat in Straw Silk

Silk Road Fibers has created a color list of all their available Straw Silk threads. This ribbon-like flat thread is a mix of silk and paper.  It looks like raffia, and can be used on either 13 or 18 count, depending on the stitch you want.  For tent stitches or long stitches on 18 count, you can split it down the middle to get a thinner thread.  Use a needle to get the split going at a cut end, then pull the two parts apart slowly and carefully.
http://silkroadfiber.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Silk-Road-Fiber-Color-List-6.2017.pdf

I used a lot of Straw Silk on Leigh Designs "Japanese Tea House."  The tree bark and the lower layer of leaves are in Straw Silk.  So is the mass of bushes in the lower right corner.  I've used it in places on many other designs but not in such profusion as here.  It was perfect for the plants on this piece.
https://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com/2013/11/tantalizing-glimpses.html

I also used it for the straw hat worn by the "Miami Gold Digger," again from Leigh Designs.  The photo of the hat is above.  Once again it was the absolutely perfect thread for this section of my canvas.

If you prefer a look at the color card, here it is.
http://silkroadfiber.com/straw-silk-fiber/

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright June 7, 2017 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.

Box Beads (Sundance)

Sundance's Box Beads

Recently Sundance sent me a selection of their new "box" beads to play with.   As you can see from the photo, these are perfectly square beads that are 3mm on each side.  The holes in the middle of each bead are relatively large.

Box Beads in Corners of Gold Digger Miami

I used Sundance's box beads as accents in the corners of my Gold Digger Miami piece from Leigh Designs.  The photo above is a test using gold and red beads so I could decide which color I liked best.  (I went with the red.)  I was able to use a doubled strand of overdyed cotton to go through each bead 3-4 times to secure it, so those center holes will take a very fat thread, probably even a strand of Impressions or something similar in diameter.  The beads themselves stand up high off the canvas and are slightly larger than a normal round size 11/0 bead.

Very nice and the color selection is large, which is always a plus.   I certainly will be using these again!

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright February 25, 2016 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.

Border Help from Carole and Michael

I just got my hands on Desert Island Stitches, Volume Two:  Ideas for Creative Borders.  This is one of the two newest books from the creative minds of Michael Boren and Carole Lake. (The other is Twisty Stitches Vol. 1, but more about that later.)  I was lucky to get an early copy since my current piece, Leigh's "Miami Gold Digger" has an elaborate border for which I needed ideas.
http://www.leighdesigns.com/Grp505x.html

This is a little book, like all the Desert Island Stitches books.   The Desert Island Stitches series are meant to be portable idea machines, not encyclopedias of stitches.  It's spiral bound with a laminated front and back cover for durability.  Borders is eighty pages long, if you count the title page and the list of reference books for further reading at the end.  Twenty-three of those pages are diagrams of border stitches.  There are anywhere from three fat borders to ten skinny borders diagrammed in black, white and gray on each page.  Each chapter deals with a separate type of border and typical examples are also diagrammed in that section.

Folks who prefer their stitch diagrams numbered should note that Michael and Carole do not number the stitch path.  They want people to figure this out on their own, which reflects their backgrounds as needlepoint teachers and designers.  They know there are many ways to work a stitch, depending on how much thread you have and the look you want.

The bulk of the book is an explanation of the various types of borders (borders that run all around the perimeter without a break, borders with corners or center motifs, borders that have mitered corners, etc.,) and tips on how to count out and create such borders.  Chapter introductions to each type of border and the crucial Rules of Divisibility counting tips page are printed on pink paper to make them easy to find.  The Rules of Divisibility section was of the greatest help to me since counting is always a problem.  I was able to figure out with Carole's and Michael's help how to position the border I wanted to use (found on page 59) so that it counted out correctly.

Anyone who uses a lot of decorative borders, striped backgrounds or narrow bands on their needlepoint will want a copy of this book.  Anyone unable to count out borders successfully (like me) will find it a great help.  I highly recommend it to anyone who collects needlepoint books since there are not that many books about needlepoint borders widely available.  I didn't even know June McKnight or Jane Zimmerman had books on borders!  (See the reference book list for more.) This would be perfect for a local stitching chapter's lending library or for a shop's reference shelf.

Your local shop can order this from Rainbow Gallery, Michael and Carole's book distributor, or you can order it directly from the authors.
https://www.four51.com/UI/Customer.aspx?p=Catalog&CatID=PQ0DWi8Xy3jvBKPf-szSRzvwov3vUw-sktHeo6qVC7l4vuVvGFj5kuig-e-e&CatInteropID=994CA9D3-3E43-46A1-B308-D4B2A8F38D02&CEI=6815749b-863a-46e2-8447-9c4fe231f2f4

Miami Gold Digger has a Border!

By the way, here's my border underway.  There's more border to come, courtesy of Carole and Michael who took a lot of mystery out of creating decorative borders!

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright February 7, 2016 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.

Want to Learn Needle Painting? Deviating from The Plan Part Two

Yesterday we talked about padding parts of the Miami Gold Digger's dog, then stitching over those areas, finishing up with my struggles to make the dog's mouth look good.  The photo above is my original sketch showing the ways in which I thought my stem stitches should curve to mimic fur realistically.

And here is how the dog looks once I finished the eyes, nose and mouth.  Look carefully at the dog's ears and you will see there is a line of tent stitches on either side of the face and under the mouth to create a chin. I liked the chin but the tent stitches on the side of the face had to go.  With needle painting, mistakes are easy--you just cover them with more stitches!  So I added more stem stitches flowing from the head to the ear tips, covering the tent stitches I didn't want.  Here is what the dog face looked like after I finished.  

You can see how the ear tent stitches are covered.  No one knows they are there except you and me!  I have to admit I worked hard on the chest to get the slant of the stem stitches right.  That was the hardest part of the dog for me.  But I worked this a little at a time by taking my four plies of Silk/Cashmere and splitting them further into eight sections.  You have to be careful doing this as the thread will separate if you pull too hard--it's not really meant to be separated into 8 plies.  But doing so enabled me to cover just a little at a time as I tried to get the chest area right.  I could have also used one ply of silk floss as well if I wanted just a touch of coverage.  That also works without looking too different than the Silk/Cashmere used for the fur.

Finally I ended up with a dog that looks like this--I hope you like him and that my struggles and planning show you how to proceed with needle painting.  It just takes a little planning, some careful observation when things go wrong to figure out how to fix them, and then layers of new stitches on top to hide your mistakes.  In fact, it is really not that hard once you understand how it is done.

I hope you'll give needle painting a try.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright December 24, 2015 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.

Want to Learn Needle Painting? Deviating from The Plan Part One

Black and White Sketch with Guide Lines

Once I had a sketch plan for how to stitch my little dog (above), it was time to do the stitching.  As a reminder, this is an 18 count canvas and I used white size 8 perle cotton and two colors of Gloriana's new Silk/Cashmere thread (using two plies of the four the thread automatically separates into) for the majority of the dog.

Padding Added

As you may remember from last week, I planned to pad the dog's ears, forehead and cheeks and perhaps the front legs.  Then I would use mostly stem stitches on top of the padded and non-padded areas.  So I started out by padding the dog's cheeks and forehead,  put a large X stitch over the area above the nose followed by a few horizontal stitches, then tent stitched its chest and front legs.  You can see all that above plus I outlined the dog's ears 2/3 of the way around with stem stitches.  All of this was done with white perle cotton except for the gray tent stitches which were done in gray perle cotton.

I started to feel uneasy about the tent stitched legs and chest (after all, it's going to be difficult to stitch through a layer of tent stitches), so I left that area alone and stitched horizontal stitches across the cheeks and vertical stitches across the forehead with my Silk/Cashmere.  Traditionally if you pad an area, the next layer is done perpendicular to the first, hence the orientation of my second layers.  I added more horizontal layers over the area just above the dog's little black nose, which isn't traditional, but that seemed to work well.

In the photo above you see all that finished, plus I've stem stitched the ears, working the stitches to match the direction of my black and white drawing but covering the stem stitched edge of the ears.  Those stem stitches lift the edges of the ears slightly.  Once I had all that done, it was time to stem stitch the front legs, then the dog's body and tail.  I switched to a crewel needle to do the legs as the sharp tip makes it easier to stitch through the underlying tent stitches.  I omitted the tent stitches from the stitch guide, by the way.  I can't see that adding or omitting them makes much difference, but sometimes you don't know this until you try it.

Next I added two black Swarovski bicone beads for the eyes and three little stitches in black Petite Very Velvet for the nose.  Those PVV stitches were a long horizontal stitch at the top of the nose with a shorter horizontal stitch under that, then a vertical very short stitch under the top two stitches, making a T shape.  With two plies of black Splendor silk floss, I stem stitched the mouth.








Take a good look at the mouth--doesn't it look grumpy?  So out it came but not before I took a good look at it.  I decided the problem was the mouth was too long on the right side and that two plies were too fat.  After I removed the black threads I switched to one ply of black silk and tried again.  This is what I came up with--

The mouth is better but it still seems to be pulled down on the right side. Checking the canvas under my magnifier, I discovered that this was actually a bit of the black painted mouth showing, so I covered it with a short horizontal white stitch topped with a white tent stitch.  When the black paint was hidden, this is the mouth I ended up with.

When it comes to the eyes, nose and mount on your canvas, it does take a bit of work to get the expression just right but all that effort is worth it.

Those of you with sharp eyes will have noticed that in the mouth photos I haven't stitched the dog's body but when you are trying to explain things, sometimes the photos are out of order.  Sorry!  The order in which one does things in a stitch guide are not always the order in which they are originally stitched.  Your stitch guide author tries to figure out the easiest way to do things, so sometimes the photos we take as we work on a model are a bit out of order.  But follow what the guide says and you will have the benefit of working the most efficient and easiest way instead of following what we did and discovering--just like the stitch guide writer did!--that it wasn't the best way of working.

This is getting a bit long so let's finish it up tomorrow, ok?

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright December 19, 2015 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.

Want to Learn Needle Painting? Planning and Sketching

Dog Unstitched

Once again, here is my Leigh Designs canvas of the Miami Gold Digger, with the little dog I plan to needle paint.  Note that the animal is semi-realistic and that it isn't too large.  For your first needle painting attempt,  you probably should start small.  This canvas is 18 count and the dog itself is approximately two inches tall and a bit over three inches long at its widest point.

Once you have picked a canvas with an animal you want to needle paint, then it is time to take a careful look at the canvas and start planning. The best way to do this is to copy the canvas animal in black and white. 

Black and White Copy

If you look carefully at the dog in the black and white version, you can see the shading lines that Leigh Designs painted on it.  These lines are what you will be trying to reproduce in your needle painting.  But before you go any further, you need to take a good luck at what the dog is made up of.  In the photo, the dog has large ears, chubby cheeks, prominent eyes and nose and forehead, front paws clearly defined and a tail.  The rear end is much less defined as the rear legs and body are tucked under Mia's arm.  All this means that you will want some parts of the dog to stand out and some parts to be less prominent.  I like to make things more prominent with padding but there are other ways to do this.  You can use beads and bright colors, too.  With a white and gray dog, bright colors are out, so I planned to use padding on the cheeks, forehead and ears and to add beads for the eyes.

I am going to use stem stitches for the bulk of the dog's body, with a few straight and slanting lines where needed.  To help me keep the fur look accurate, I drew pencil lines on my black and white copy of the part of my canvas with the dog.  You do this by imagining that you are petting or brushing the fur with the pencil.  If you use a pencil, you can erase and redraw the lines until you are satisfied.  This is what I ended up with. Note that my marks are in blue ink so they are visible to you.

Lines to Guide Stem Stitches

Note that things change as you stitch.  You may not end up with fur that flows exactly this way but at least you have a plan.  Next time we'll talk about the various areas I stitched and how my plan changed over time.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright December 17, 2015 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.

Want to Learn Needle Painting?

Campanita, The Miami Gold Digger's Dog

I'm sure regular visitors of Blog have noticed that recently my profile photo at the top of the right hand column has been the little dog from the Miami Gold Digger canvas I'm currently stitching.  There's a reason for that--I'm going to use this in a needle painting tutorial.  But first, let's talk about what classic needle painting is.

Basically it is creating very realistic animals, usually with one or two plies of cotton floss, using only a limited range of stitches:  long and short, stem stitch, split stitch and perhaps a few straight or slightly slanted satin stitches for details like noses and whiskers and claws.

Tanja Berlin and Helen M. Stevens are masters of this technique.  Berlin Embroidery sells kits to reproduce her original designs.  If you head to her website you can see them here.
http://www.berlinembroidery.com/needlepainting.htm

Even more importantly, Tanja has posted examples of her instructions for various items:  birds, animals and flowers.  Click on any of her examples and you will see diagrams for which colors to use where, diagrams that show the direction of the stitches you will be using and diagrams that tell you what order to stitch the animal parts in.  She uses long and short stitch for most of her fur, feathers and flower petals with 1-2 plies of cotton floss.

Helen Stevens' website isn't quite as detailed (she teaches, lectures and writes books on her techniques) but the photos are knockouts!  She uses the same stitches as Tanja but adds various other stitches for special areas like wings.  She also tends to use silk flosses for her designs.  
http://www.helenmstevens.co.uk

Impressed?  Intimidated?

Be impressed but don't worry--this isn't nearly as hard as it looks.  All you need is patience and to observe dogs to see how their fur lies since we don't want to stitch Campanita's ears so the fur sticks out in an unrealistic way.  Don't own a dog?  Not to worry--Watson will pose for us.

Watson at 8 weeks

Stay tuned for an orientation to the threads and stitches we'll be using.  I will add article links to a new tab called "Needle Painting on Needlepoint Canvas Tutorial" as they go live.  Which will be when I have time, this being the holidays.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright November 29, 2015 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.

TNNA Columbus May 2015 Favorites

I've started to assemble a collection of my favorites from TNNA's Summer Show in Columbus, Ohio.  These are personal favorites, things I'd like to stitch myself, and listed in no particular order.

Melissa Shirley has created a huge number of new pieces for the summer show.  
http://melissashirleydesigns.com/gallery/?bsn=1

Melissa Shirley's Christmas Tree Angel Ornament 1879-D

I am particularly fond of Melissa's little angel ornaments (also available in a larger standup size),  but the dog ornaments in the Best Friends Collection from Mary Lake-Thompson are also charming!  Some of them repeat dog portraits that were released earlier as full sized pieces.

Border Collie Ornament (Mary Lake Thompson) MLT325-F

Not to worry, there's a cat among the dog ornaments.

Vicki Swayer's Snowy Nadia VS152

Fans of Vicki Swayer's animal portraits won't be disappointed.  There's a cow, a huge number of funny chipmunks, birds from the beach (and other places), a hare and a toad, and my personal favorite--this polar bear.

Leigh Designs has released their normal series of eight--this time the Gold Diggers.  Each beauty features typical gear for a gold digger in that neck of the woods.  Recognize anyone?  LOL
http://www.leighdesigns.com/Grp505x.html

Leigh's Gold Digger Miami

Leigh's friends have been busy created stitch guides for this beautiful crew of ladies looking for the big bucks!    Sandy Arthur has done a guide for Hollywood, Pat Miller has done Vegas, Houston is by Carolyn Taggart, and Sharon Quick has done Scottsdale.  My personal favorite is Miami and I'll be stitching that once I finish No Flying Monkeys.

Spooky Pumpkin H-011 from JP

Juli Poitras of JP Needlepoint has a lot of classic pieces, but my very favorite is "Spooky Pumpkin" from her Halloween banners.
http://www.jpneedlepoint.com/Newdesigns.html

Pepperberry's Cool Reindeer

Pepperberry Designs also has dog ornaments (Do I sense a theme developing here?) but my favorite is this Cool Reindeer ornament!
http://www.pepperberry-designs.com/whats-new/

Labors of Love's Mini Mermaid LL510T

Labors of Love has added new clip on birds and a dimensional turkey and 2-sided snowmen, but their series of eight mermaid ornaments is my favorite.   They've also added to their Storybook characters series and have created a "bridal tree" club.
http://www.laborsofloveneedlepoint.com/see-whats-new.html

Ewe and Eye's Winter Sleigh Scene with Custom Frame

Ewe and Eye and Maggie have collaborated again with Lisa Krause for some wonderful custom frames.  There is even a mirror and a dry erase board!  My personal favorite is this winter sleigh scene above.  I don't usually like folk art designs but I find this one charming.
https://www.facebook.com/NeedlepointCom/photos/pcb.839615632797446/839614979464178/?type=1&theater

Scott Church/CBK Beaver working on Candy Cane

CBK has some new Scott Church Creative pieces.  The beaver above cracks me up.
https://www.facebook.com/519994421356592/photos/pb.519994421356592.-2207520000.1433078779./910783172277713/?type=3&theater

Those are my very favorites but I know there are many great canvases I missed.  What's YOUR favorite?

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright May 29, 2015 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.