New Designs and Products UPDATED

The Internet is full of new products and news from the online world of needlepoint this week.  Lots of folks have photos of new designs or new products that have arrived at their shops.  Working more or less alphabetically, let's start with Patt and Lee's new dog canvas (shown above).  They are known for their cats so this is a welcome addition to their design portfolio.
http://pattandleedesigns.blogspot.com/2010/05/dog-just-finished.html

Squiggee is showing off her button faces that are paired with some of her new canvases.  It is a new and different way to embellish a painted canvas that I think will be very popular.
http://squiggeedesigns.blogspot.com/2010/05/heads.html

Nimble Needle has some neat new items in their shop.  I've never seen a pocket flask with a needlepoint panel before.  It would look great with a monograph on a plaid background!  They also have great photos of some of the watch band kits from L'Esprit de France.
http://thenimbleneedle.blogspot.com/

UPDATE:  Here's a second version of the pocket flask for your viewing pleasure.
http://blog.thepointofitallonline.com/2010/05/sip-and-stitch.html

Pocket Full of Stitches has posted many photos of new designs and new products in the last 3-4 entries of their blog.  Don't miss the needle tins, the new Elizabeth Bradley kits, photos of the threads that come with the Kelly Clark monthly pear club, and of course a sneak peak at the Ruth Schmuff hearts canvas that will be featured in the May Needlepoint Now magazine.  The Needle Index Book is just plain useful, too.
http://pocketfullofstitches.blogspot.com/

Finally, Ridgewood has posted photos of the Stitch n Zip Kindle covers. I've been dying to see these!
http://ridgewoodneedlepoint.blogspot.com/2010/05/kindle-covers.html

Truly, we are lucky to have such a huge number of needlepoint treats available to us.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

The Gingerbread House Series

Squiggee has just posted photos of all her gingerbread houses on her blog. I had no idea there were so many! I have always loved the blue and white Snow & Ice House, but you might prefer the log cabin, the castle, the pepermint stick house, the barn, one of the two Halloween houses, or maybe the thatched cottage or one of the fairy houses. Or one of the others....
http://squiggeedesigns.blogspot.com/2009/03/gingerbread-houses.html

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Now It's Snowing

I can't wait for spring! I feel much better but today I'm going to be stuck at home during a snowstorm. We have about half an inch now and it is coming down pretty well. 2-6 inches is expected today and tonight but the snow will turn to freezing rain later on.

I am glad to have a nice warm house with plenty of stash! Once I do some clean up this morning, I hope to stitch a little. For now you'll have to entertain yourself with the fun stitching other folks are doing.

First, Judy Harper is stitching tropical fish. This one is obviously a pearl fish. [loud giggles from CH] Seriously, note that Judy stitched around the pearls instead of removing them from the bare canvas and reattaching them later. I never would have thought to do that.
http://fairy-crafts.blogspot.com/2009/01/fish-is-finished.html

You will see other Squiggee designs in the set she is stitching on Judy's blog but there are more ornaments in the set. The rest are on Squiggee Herself's blog.
http://squiggeedesigns.blogspot.com/2009/01/something-is-just-plain-fishy.html


Next, let's visit Mary Corbet who is showcasing a goldwork and silk piece a friend of hers took as a class. She points out the interesting piece of gold kid too big for its leaf area and how scrunching it up made the veins. Again, I never would have thought to do that.
http://www.needlenthread.com/2009/01/readers-embroidery-goldwork-pansy.html

For just plain fun, let's visit Jocelyn in NZ where she has finished Twister in chocolate and mint colors. Let's say this all together--I never would have thought of that color combo but it looks great!
http://pinsneedles.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/twister-is-finished/

Cyn is stitching a little round ornament with an unusual border treatment. I would have done straight stitches curving around the circle's black rim but Pat Thode is much cleverer than me. All together now--"I never would have thought of that!"
http://cyns-stitches.blogspot.com/2009/01/heartstings-drum-nutcracker-january-24.html

Blogs are turning into a great source of ideas for our needlepoint, aren't they? Certainly no matter how creative one is, there is always something interesting to learn from our fellow stitchers.

Now, let's go shovel snow!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Stitching Skies, Pugs and Fancy Stitches (with Common Threads)

The tips from professional needlepointers on their blogs keep coming--in alphabetical order we have:

ABS Designs' Anne Stradal explains how she stitches skies with needle blended colors and simple stitches.
http://thecapestitcher.blogspot.com/2009/01/needle-blending-sky.html

Gail Hendrix of Squiggee Designs demonstrates that you can do wonderful things on 10 count as well as 18 count NP canvas. Folks with bad vision all over the world rejoice!
http://squiggeedesigns.blogspot.com/2009/01/pug-anyone.html

This is after Gail shows us how to use commonly available threads to great effect on her newest canvas, an iris circle.
http://squiggeedesigns.blogspot.com/2009/01/squiggee-is-stitchingthe-moon-is-green.html

Judy Harper also discusses this topic in her dissertation on cotton threads.
http://fairy-crafts.blogspot.com/2009/01/tutorial-for-cotton-thread-bargello-egg.html

Finally Orna Willis has added an explanation of Jessicas with a great diagram to her website's collection of instructional PDFs. I found out about this on her blog that had the link to here--
http://www.ornadesign.com/how-to

The above proves once again that stitchers are wonderfully sharing folks!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Anne is Ready for Tea Now

Anne Stradal (she's the owner of ABS Designs) has finished her vacation stitching another designer's Japanese portrait and is ready to celebrate. Here's the blog entry describing her final touches to Nippon Textures.

http://thecapestitcher.blogspot.com/2009/01/let-tea-ceremony-begin.html

The above is the companion piece to the Squiggee Three Women and a Peach which I just finished (and need to get on that album cover). It is really worth a visit to Anne's blog to read how she stitched this piece. It is similar in some ways to my stitching of Three Women and very different in other ways. Click on the photo to enlarge it and you'll see why I have been asking Anne to do stitch guides for her pieces for years. (Ok, the truth was I've begged and begged, especially for the fabulous Door canvases you can see on her website by finding the link on the left top part of her blog.)

Lovely collaboration, Anne and Gail!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Needlepoint Sandwich Ingredients

I can tell I thoroughly confused some of you when I talked about how I was going to put Three Women and a Peach on the photo album cover. The flap (the album is open with the flap pulled away from the cover--the cover and flap both have magnets in them so they stick together) is pulled back and the album open with the NP canvas, the bead on its linen DMC string and the trim I found yesterday are all visible.

I've not done anything more on assembling the photo album as I was still hunting trim. I am lucky in that there are two large fabric shops and a crafts emporium that carries sewing supplies near me. It just takes time to visit them all. Yesterday I found brown braid that'll be perfect. It's on a piece of tape. This is pillow trim and the tape is so you can sandwich the trim tape between two pieces of fabric and easily sew up a pillow. I am not sure if I'll cut the tape off and hand sew the brown braid on or leave it in place. Haven't decided what's easier yet.

The album flap you see on the right will be sandwiched between my two pieces of finishing foam. When the flap is open so you can flip through the album pages, you'll see the brocade side of the sandwich. When the flap is closed, you'll see the NP because the magnetized flap itself will be sandwiched between the back and front of the ornament.

I've just typed "sandwich" three times. I must be hungry!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Why I'll Never Be a Professional Finisher, Part Two

Here you see the second piece of finishing foam, covered with my brocade fabric. Also in the photo is my fake ivory Buddha bead that I'll use to pull open the magnetic flap of the photo album which will be covered by my round piece of needlepoint. I cut a length of brown DMC linen thread, made a loop and stuck the loop through the bead with the loose ends coming out of the bottom. I then tied several knots to hold the bead and fringed the ends which weren't plied to begin with. I like the rough look of the linen with my brown suede photo album and the NP canvas itself.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Why I'll Never Be a Professional Finisher, Part One

This photo is the back side of Three Women and a Peach, trimmed to about an inch of bare canvas, and turned under over my piece of finishing foam. You can see I've pleated the bare canvas in places as I folded it back, then stitched the pleats to hold them. I started lacing a bit but that will need to wait until I slip the photo album's magnetic flap into the slot cut out of the finishing foam. Once I do that, I'll know how tightly to lace the canvas from top to bottom. I probably won't lace side to side because of the flap. I'll still need to remove the NP from the flap while I attach the back side piece of finishing foam that is covered with my brocade.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Nippon Textures is Underway!

Anne Stradal has started blog-stitching the companion piece to Three Women and a Peach. This design is called Nippon Textures and is also from Squiggee. It is a 7 inch diameter circle on 18 count, which is the same size and canvas count as the piece I just finished stitching.

You can follow along by reading Anne's blog, The Cape Stitcher.
http://thecapestitcher.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-year-new-project.html

Anne's style is much more traditional than mine. She is likely to use much more tent stitch and to use different threads than I did, so this is going to be fun!

We can always learn from each other, so I hope to get lots of ideas from Anne's stitching.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Supplies Needed for Three Women...

Thanks to a remark from Madonna, I know how I will finish my Squiggee design of Three Women and a Peach. It is going to be put on the cover of a photo album.

Above you see some of my supplies for finishing this piece--the photo album (covered in brown suede and about an inch taller and 2 inches wider than my 7 inch round canvas), my paper color copy of the canvas before I started stitching it, and a piece of tan finishing foam cut to a 7 inch circle. I used brown finishing foam to put under my NP because the background stitch is an open one that doesn't hide the underlying brown canvas. I don't want someone noticing the backing inside the NP through those holes!

You have noticed that the finishing foam has a piece cut out of the middle. That's because the album is held together with a magnetic flap. You pull the flap away from the magnet to open the album. I put my paper pattern under the flap in various positions and when I was happy with one, I traced around the flap and then cut out the section. I used the paper pattern before it was cut to cut two pieces of finishing foam and then used the paper pattern after it was cut away to trim the same sized slot from one piece of finishing foam. What you don't see in the photo is my second round disk of finishing foam which is currently under a heavy book to help the brocade fabric that covers one side dry. I just glued the fabric on so that item missed the photo shoot.

I plan to layer the two pieces of finishing foam, one covered in fabric, in this order from the bottom up: finishing foam circle with the back covered in brocade facing to the bottom of the layers, magnetic flap, brown finishing foam with the slot cut out that will fit right around the magnetic flap, and then finally the NP canvas itself on top. I don't think I'll put quilt batting inside this piece, but I may change my mind about that. I will need something to pull to open the flap as I won't want folks pulling up on the needlepoint to open the album. I happen to have a carved fake ivory bead shaped like an oval Buddha that I can use as a pull.

The reason that I just happened to have the right bead is that I do a lot of stitching with Asian themes. I keep my eyes open wherever I go and pick up items that look good with this style. I found the bead in the local bead shop near where I work last spring and bought it, knowing that eventually it would come in handy. You can do this sort of pro-active shopping yourself. If you love Santa canvases (or rabbits, or whatever), just watch for beads, charms, trims, etc. that you really like that are also Santa-themed (or bunnies or whatever it is you tend to stitch). Pick them up on sale and put them in your stash for later. I almost always find a use for my bits of Asian things eventually.

The next step is for me to put the trimmed needlepoint canvas I just stitched around the brown piece of finishing foam and lace the sides down. Then I will need to figure out how and where to attach the bead Buddha, put the layers together and stitch the back layer to the front. The final step will be attaching trim around the edges. I don't have the right trim yet. I waited to buy that last as I wanted to have everything else. The trim needs to look good with all the parts and I wasn't sure what I was using until yesterday when stores closed early because it was New Year's.

By the way, Happy New Year. I saw a nice sentiment on Jane's Japanese Embroidery blog. She wrote "May 2009 bring you smooth silks and even stitches."

I hope you have all that and good health in the new year, too.


Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Companion Piece to Three Women and a Peach UPDATED

I've discovered from reading Judy Harper's blog that Squiggee has a new round Asian piece that is a companion piece to Three Women and a Peach. It is called "Nippon Textures." I assume it is also seven inches in diameter on 18 count canvas but it's not on the Squiggee website yet for me to check.

http://fairy-crafts.blogspot.com/2008/12/nippon-textures-more-gail-hendrix.html

I love the way the clothing patterns move the eye around this piece. I understand that Anne Strahal will be blog-stitching this. I'll let you know when she starts it so you can watch it unfold as well.

UPDATE: Anne has started stitching! Here's the first posting about this piece on her blog, The Cape Stitcher.
http://thecapestitcher.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-year-new-project.html

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Three Women and a Peach by Squiggee

It's done! YEAH!

Many thanks to Gail Hendrix and Dr. Janet Moyer for all their suggestions. Couldn't have done it without you.

Now, how do I finish it?

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

The Final Touch

When I finished the hair ornaments on The Geisha's wig, I was close to being finished with this canvas, but not quite done. I wanted to add one more thing--the Chinese characters for "three" and "women." You see them above the cleaning lady's outstretched arm. The three horizontal bars are "three" and the intertwined character below is "women." This was the idea of the Asian scholar I asked about the canvas before I started stitching it. She found the characters for me, which are used by the Japanese. I practiced on a scrap canvas until I could embroider the characters and used two plies of DMC in #610. It's darker than the DMC background (DMC #612) but not as stark as black would be.

Finding the right color was a bit of a struggle but I took various leftover threads from my stitching of this piece to use in my practice stitching to see if the plum color looked good, if black was too dark, if the blue from the lady's maid's yakuta would tie the two sides of the design together, etc. Nothing worked until I just picked a darker shade of the background color. It's there but subtle which is very Japanese.

Tomorrow I'll post a photo of the whole design.

Before I forget, the ANG website has a nice little charted "chop" from the late Mary Duckworth (renowned for her Asian charted designs) which is the little frame you can put your initials in to sign an Asian piece. That could easily go on the background instead of the Chinese characters....
http://www.needlepoint.org/Archives/Circles.php

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Stitching Hair Ornaments for The Geisha

Above are The Geisha's hair ornaments. If you look at the hairpins on the right and left, you can easily see that they were done before the beads or the long straight stitches were added on top. I sat down with my color copy of the original canvas and planned out what I wanted to do with the hair ornaments, step-by-step. I had the beads (white, blue and pink) that came with the canvas and the original design from Gail Hendrix which I didn't follow entirely. I love the little dangles that geishas wear in their hair and wanted to add some to this design. I also didn't want quite as many beads in her hair as in the original design since the black Japanese flat silk I used for her hair is so lovely. I didn't want to cover it all up, and I also was worried about disturbing it by stitching through the flat silk.

So planning was important. I needed to decide what to include, what to omit, and the order in which things had to be stitched. The pink comb was stitched already. You probably remember that the black areas between the comb teeth are tent stitches done in the same Soy Fiber I used for the hair of the other two women. I also added the three straight lines that make up the hairpin on the right side before I put the flat silk stitches in. I thought metallic thread might disturb the flat silk.

It turns out the flat silk is rather forgiving when it comes to putting other stitches on top of it as long as you are careful. I tried to go down into the canvas from the front as much as possible. I also used a sharp beading needle for the beads so I could put the stitches exactly where I wanted instead of using a John James short beading needle which is shorter than regular beading needles with a slightly duller tip.

The dangles are a long length of Accentuate with a bead added, then stitched again with a short stitch through the bead to hold it where it needed to be placed. I scanned the canvas to give you a good look at the headdress which disturbed the beads somewhat since the canvas goes face down on a scanner. I had to reposition them with my needle's tip slightly when I finished the scan. Looks like there's a bit of Accentuate sticking up also. A photograph or scan is very good to find things like this, even though using the scanner probably caused the disturbance to begin with!

The real trick to adding hair ornaments on top of flat silk is to plan out what you are going to do, going slowly and using a sharp needle as much as possible.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Planning Hair Ornaments for The Geisha

I hope to finsh laying the black Japanese flat silk on The Geisha's wig today. Once I have all the stitches in, I will need to add her hair ornaments. Here is what the plain canvas looks like. I have a xerox copy and scans of it to use as reference material so that I can put everything where it belongs once I stitch on top of the painted areas and see the pattern of the beads. I may add to this, of course, but I like the original placement so I am very glad I have all the copies of the original painting of the canvas I need!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Half a Wig is Better Than None

I didn't get any stitching done on The Geisha's wig last night--Christmas madness has struck Chilly Hollow and there are many last minute items to see to before the holidays. So you'll have to be satisfied with a photo of my progress to date, which is the lower half of the wig with some stitching done on the top. I didn't enhance this photo. I wanted you to see how the left side wing of the wig looks grey while the right wing looks black. That's the light reflecting from the scanner in different ways. Flat silk when laid carefully bounces light in all directions and these two "wings" are slanted differently. So the light is reflected differently.

I am considering whether to even off the right wing's tip. It isn't noticable in person that there are many separate strands of silk there. I'll think about it. I also see in the photo one of the Accentuate long stitches has moved around. I'll put it where it belongs tonight. A photo or scan is great for these little things which are often not noticable in real life.

Glenda posted that it helps her to stitch black threads on black to put a red cloth or towel in her lap. If I have time to stitch tonight I'll try that. Thanks, Glenda.

The pink comb in the wig was stitched before I started laying the silk for the wig. I first tent stitched the little comb teeth with Kreinik 1/16" metallic ribbon in the lavender/pink shade #093, then I did long slanting stitches \ along the diagonal line for the bottom base of the comb with the same thread. The final step was to do a long narrow cross stitch on top of each comb tooth with Accentuate in Lavender #111 and then do long horizontal stitches across the comb base, again with the Accentuate. This very thin and strong metallic thread adds a tiny bit of darker color to the comb and also holds the long slanting stitches in place.

I'll use the same 1/16" ribbon to stitch the large pink hair stick that is on the right near where the length of black silk end stitcks up on the front of the canvas. I left that untrimmed so you could tell where it is approximately. I probably will bring up that thread at the base of the hair stick before I lay the silk around it, then put it down gentle on top of the silk. I think that will disturb the wig stitches less than having to come up at the hair stick's end in the background area and plunge the thread through the wig stitches.

Everyone else, hope your holiday isn't too hectic -- or too cold, snowy and icy!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

How to Stitch a Wig

The drawing above is my feeble attempt to show you how I plan to stitch The Geisha's wig. The arrows show how the thread will be laid. Remember that most of these areas are padded with Soy Fiber laid in the opposite direction as the top flat silk threads will be laid.

The drawing above is my feeble attempt to show you how I plan to stitch The Geisha's wig. The arrows show how the thread will be laid. Remember that most of these areas are padded with Soy Fiber laid in the opposite direction as the top flat silk threads will be laid.

Actually, half of the hair is finished. It covers the ornaments except for areas where hair ornaments poke out over the background. I hope to finish tonight if the light is good. Getting the direction right when stitching with black threads on black painted canvas is difficult!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

The Geisha's Peach

Last night I stitched the peach The Geisha is studying. It is the central motif of the design and stands for a long life or immortality, depending on your interpretation. It is painted in lovely shades of peach, orange sherbet, pink and rose and is obviously intented to be tent stitched. However, I wanted to do something a bit different that would make the peach stand out more than tent stitches and four shades of silk, so I stitched it in long Interlocking Goblein stitches with one strand of peach Accentuate (#304). Once I finished the Interlocking Goblein, I laid long stitches vertically on top of the peach in the "ditches" between the NP canvas threads. This made the peach more solid but didn't cover much of the lovely shading of the painted canvas. In person the peach gleams but the metallic isn't overpowering. You can also see the shading of the colors through the Accentuate. I did try stitching this with two strands of Accentuate but that hid some of the shading and it also made the peach a little too prominent.

My next step was to stitch the leaf. I used a beautiful green silk perle from Au Ver a Soie called Soie Gobelins (#225). (My spool is older and has the Kreinik label because Kreinik did distribute the thread at one time.) It is a very thin perle thread, probably #12 or even smaller in size, and when I used packed stem stitch, it looks both delicate and like a freshly picked leaf.

I probably will cut a small piece of gold lame and sew it in place underneath the peach so that it has an extra gold gleam, but I'll decide that when I finish the piece. It will take some planning as there is open background stitch nearby that I won't want the gold fabric to peek through. We'll see....

Perhaps The Geisha is just looking at the peach to see if it's really ripe but her contemplative face tells me she is thinking about something more important than dessert. I hope I managed to stitch the peach well enough that it is worthy of her interest!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

The Geisha's Robe Is Done?

You may have noticed how I avoided talking about one part of The Geisha's robe--the medium dusty rose pink labels that overlap the chrysanthemums on plum body of the robe. If you watched the video showing kimono layering I found on the Immortal Geisha website, you'll probably agree that this area is a kimono layer showing from underneath. This was the most difficult part of the kimno for me to stitch as I had a lot of ideas that didn't seem to work well with either the plum chrysanthemum area or the box-covered shawl collar.

I finally did long straight vertical satin stitches (4 plies of Splendor S1035) for the bulk of the collar except for a tiny area at the bottom of the left side where straight stitches looked odd. I pulled them out and used diagonal stitches from the top of the flower to that area's left to the bottom of the kimono and that worked better. I may replace some of the long stitches on the right side of the kimono near the peach with diagonals, too. I haven't decided yet.

Once the long stitches were in, I wanted to emphasize the thin deep plum line that separates the various collar areas from each other. I thought a stem stitched line in my deep plum would be perfect but I wanted a perle type thread for that so I'd have a bit of "loft" -- round perles are higher than flat plies and so I wanted perle.

Enter Stage Left my very best friend when it comes to stitching supplies--Liz, the new owner of Needlewoman East. [Loud applause!]

I gave Liz the color number of my Splendor and asked her to rummage around to find a silk or cotton perle around size #8 that was the same deep plum, or something very similar. I hoped that there was a card of Elegance in the same color (Rainbow Gallery also sells three sizes of perle silks in colors that match Splendor and Elegance is #8 perle-sized) but that wasn't the case. Unfortunately, the closest color match was a cotton perle that was several shades lighter than my deep plum Splendor S1037. We talked it over and decided that a deeper color would work, but not a lighter one. So Liz wasn't able to help, although if I'd broadened my search parameters to a wool or silk/wool thread, I suspect she might have come up with something. You do have to think texture when matching colors. A silk like Splendor that's not really shiny will look enough like a cotton perle that a viewer probably won't notice they aren't the same thread but a wool and a silk will not match in texture.

Thanks anyway, Liz! I'll come see you for the big after Christmas sale....

[Liz bows, waves and blows kisses to you all, then exits to join the other shop owners in the audience. Many thanks to shop owners everywhere. What would we do without you?]

So I did what anyone would do who couldn't get a perle to match her floss--I made my own. It's pretty simple: Put 4-6 plies of your floss in your needle, secure it on the back and come up as usual at the starting point, then twist the needle (I went counterclockwise) until you have a tight little cord. Plunge the needle while keeping the tension on the thread so it doesn't untwist. I did my stem stitches carefully up the kimono collars, carefully checking to make sure the thread wasn't unwinding when I came up from the back. It took a while but now I have a little edge along the dark plum lines on the kimono. You can't see it in the photos but it is there in person and it raises the areas enough to give a bit of lift to the kimono's edges to frame The Geisha's face.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Beaded Boxes

Last night I finished the shawl collar's boxes of both colors. I did do fake eyelets in the blue boxes by using tent or reverse tent stitches all around the edge. I left the centers bare and added pink beads which are attached with a cross stitch using one ply of my deep plum Splendor S1037. I thought since the beads are all sitting on top of a thread intersection due to the way the blue boxes are painted, that a cross stitch would secure them better than my more usual doubled thread through and then stitched again with one ply on either side of the bead.

I used 4 plies of DMC 964 for the blue boxes, which is a lighter version of the teal blue thread (DMC 187) that outlines the cleaning woman's yakuta on the left side. The canvas is painted this way and I think the color looks very good with the plums and dusty pinks in The Geisha's robe.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow