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

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

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

Boxed Kimono

Yesterday Pat in NC mentioned that eyelets might work for the blue boxes scattered among the pale dusty rose ones on The Geisha's shawl collar. I hadn't thought of that! My idea was to use a split Scotch stitch variation where the long middle stitch is turned into two short stitches with an unstitched place in the middle where I can put one of the pretty pink beads that came with my Squiggee canvas. Last night I worked more of the regular Scotch stitches in the background and did two blue boxes on the right lapel's bottom, one in a boxey eyelet that's really just tent and reverse tent stitches (my blue squares don't have a hole in the center; they have a thread intersection) and my Scotch variation. What do you think? Right now I'm leaning toward Pat's eyelet stitch....

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

Squares on the Kimono

Last night I finished the embroidered chrysanthemums on The Geisha's robe and worked on finding the right stitch for the shawl collar. It is painted with squares scattered in an irregular pattern on it, so I wanted a background of squares, or at least as many as I could squeeze in before I had to compensate.

I ended up using Scotch Stitch with my Soie Perlee silk.

http://www.needlepoint.org/StitchOfTheMonth/98-06.php

I am not placing my Scotch stitches in a regular way--I'm scattering them into the largest areas where I can and compensating around them. The painted blocks of color are not in a regular pattern--why should my Scotch stitches be?

Note I am making sure my Scotch stitches all slant the same way. One can alternate them and stitch a beautiful pattern that catches the light but this is random enough already that I thought changing direction of the Scotch stitches would look messy.

I'll attempt to finish these little boxes tonight while I think about how to stitch the painted blue boxes they surround.


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

The Chrysanthemum Robe

As you know, the Geisha's kimono is in three shades of plum and has flowers on the outside. (It has little squares on the inner part but more about those another time.) I tent stitched all the deep plum color first (4 plies of Splendor #S1037) before stitching the flowers. In the photo above, they are all done except for the bottom flower on the right side, which still has lower petals to go. Using my pale dusty pink Soie Perlee (a silk perle thread that is about the size of #8 cotton perle according to the Thread Thesaurus) in color 3333, I filled the chrysanthemum shapes with packed stem stitch, working from the outside largest curve to the inside. In a few places I did a tent or reverse tent stitch to indicate the single stitch that was painted there. Occasionally I noticed that my stem stitches weren't packed tightly and had to go back and add a stitch between two that didn't touch the way they were supposed to.

I'm hoping this looks like a chain stitch flower that I've seen on many Chinese robes. I know our ladies are Japanese but the flowers reminded me of Chinese embroidery and I suppose it isn't inconceivable that The Geisha might have a robe made from imported Chinese silk.

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

Progress Report on Three Women and a Peach

It's time for an overall photo of the Squiggee design of three Japanese women I've been stitching. After all, the separate parts of the designs have to look good together. It's not enough for one part to look great if it clashes with the rest of the design. So here you go.

The figures on the left and right are finished. You should go back to the Dec. 13 posting about the lady's maid and look at the left side of her yakuta where it touches her neck. See how jagged it looks? This happens in NP because you are working a grid. When you do tent stitches along a diagonal, they look like stair steps. Most of the time no one notices but when you have a very dark thread like the black outline of the robe against a very light area like the white skin all our ladies have, it can look odd. It bothered me enough that I laid a long stitch on top of the area with my black Soy Fiber and then tacked it down with a few little tent stitches right on top of the old ones. This seemed to smooth out the line somewhat and make it darker. I prefer the new look.

You can also try turning your tent stitches into cross stitches to see if that helps make the jagged line disappear. It didn't in this case (I tried) but occasionally this is the way to make the line less prominent. Gee. Make a line less prominent by stitching it twice? Who'd a thought that would work!?

I've been working on the central figure of The Geisha off and on for a while. I have tent stitched the darkest plum purple sections of her kimono (Splendor #S1035) and have started work on the satin labels and the flowers. But I'm running out of time today to talk so just take a look at her wig. It has the long lines of Soy Fiber put in right on top of the hair ornaments to use as padding. I'm going to stitch her hair with black Japanese flat silk but not until I finish the kimono.

Hope you like how this is coming together.

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

Jade's Hair

In the photo above you can see Jade's hair stitched on top of the padding, using the Soy Fiber in long stem stitches that were staggered so that each one began or ended at a slightly different place than its neighbors. I tried to do the stitches in the same direction that real hair would go. Of course there are areas that the stem stitches couldn't fit, like the curls at the nap of her neck. The tent stitches done there cover the painted canvas and look ok.

By the way, this photo is color adjusted so you can see the black threads on the black painted area of the canvas better. It is really black in person!

The bows are finished also. The knot was painted in alternating stripes of light dusty pink (I used Kreinik's Soie Perlee #3333) and light blue (Thread Gatherer's Silk N Colors in Delphinium which is the thread used on the light blue parts of her robe), so I covered the stripes with long skinny cross stitches in those colors, then took my needle full of pink silk under the row of cross stitches to put a horizontal line under them. I did that because the skinny cross stitches didn't cover well. The pink cross stitch was done using Soie Perlee which is a skinny perle-type silk thread. Very pretty but it was too thin to cover entirely.

The ends of the pink and blue bows were done in outline stitch except for the tiny bit of blue ribbon on the left which was done in reverse tent stitches covering one or two thread intersections. I worked from the centers out using my light blue and light dusty pink but I needed a darker dusty pink and a darker blue, so I used the dark blue thread from the robe (Thread Gatherer's Flax N Colors in French Blue) and the darker purple-pink that I will use on the geisha's robe. That is Rainbow Gallery's Splendor in S1035. I used the Flax N Colors as it came off the card, the Soie Perlee in one perle thread, and two plies of the silk floss Splendor and Silk N Colors.

The bow itself is a bit fancy for a lady's maid but we have to remember that she dresses the geisha and is probably up on the latest fashions and rather skilled in fixing hair so I expect her vanity got the better of her.

I'm going to work on the geisha's robe but before I do, look at the last blog entry and check out the neckline of the maid's robe. Doesn't the left side look a bit jagged? I'm going to talk about why that happened and how I fixed it next.

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

Dressing Jade

The lady's maid I call Jade on the right side of the Three Women and a Peach canvas has a robe now and I've started her hair. As you can see, I removed the medium gray outlines of her robe and restitched them in black using the same black Soy Fiber I am going to use for her hair. This same thread also created Pearl's hair, the cleaning lady on the left of this set of three women.

Robe
I discovered it was a lot easier to rip out everything (her robe, her arm, the outline stitches) and redo it when the grey outlines on her robe were just too pale. Combining medium gray outlines with medium and light blue stitches for the robe didn't give me enough contrast. I know this, having stitched a background in mint green with lilac flowers once. Although you'd think mint green and lilac aren't much alike, pale shades of both disappear into each other, which made my background muddy and without the flowers scattered around I intended. I should have learned from that but it is easy to forget lessons learned in needlepoint, as in Life! So don't you forget--mixing two light shades or even a light and medium shade may not give you enough color contrast to define the various parts of the design you are stitching.

Hair
For her hair, I mentally divided the hair into sections: the "pony tail" held by the ribbons, the tendrils of hair along her cheek and forehead, the little upturned curls at the base of her neck, the bangs at the top of her forehead and the main body of her hair. If you look at the photo, you'll see how small an area there is for her bangs, the tendrils, the nape of her neck and some of the pony tail area between the pink and blue bows in her hair. I tent stitched all of these areas except the tendrils with my Soy Silk. Tent stitches will cover all these areas and serve as padding for the top stitching I plan to do. The main body of her hair and some of her pony tail will have long lengths of my Soy Fiber laid across them in straight lines reaching from a stitch or two inside the black hair paint border to the other side almost to the edge of the paint. This raises the next layer of stitches to give a padded effect, but padding doesn't work in very small areas, hence the tent stitches. The little curls along her check had to be done differently. They are jagged vertical lines which are perfect for padded stem stitch. There are four lines, two short and two long. The short ones each got only two staggered stem stitches but the long lines had a series of rows of padded stem stitch. Sometimes I did three stem stitches, sometimes two, depending on how wide the area was.

Once the tendrils and tent stitches were done, time to pad. My first step was to grab my black and white xerox copy of the canvas and sketch in pencil how her hair flows. Once I had an idea whether an area would have slanted lines, horizontal lines, etc. of hair, I could decide how to lay the underlying padding threads. If your top layer will be straight vertical stitches, the padding is horizontal. If your lines will slant/ to the right, your padding probably will need to slant left \. This keeps the top layer raised. I will sketch this out in detail when I do the geisha's hair because she has such an elaborate wig, so this may become clearer later on. Hopefully you can see the mostly horizontal stitches of padding on Jade's hair. I'll post a second photo with her hair finished once I get the bows in her hair stitched.

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

More Lady's Maid Stitches

I wasn't 100% sure until I saw the photo above, but the Oriental Linen stitches that outline the lady's maid's dress and show fold lines are too light in color. I'm going to need a darker gray, darker even than the face outlines. So that will be pulled out tonight. In the photo above you can see the ovals on her dress, some outlined, some filled in. I decided that it would be best to outline an area with the darker Flax N Colors stitches, then fill in with the longer laid Silk N Colors stitches. Whether you stitch the centers first or stitch the outlines, a stitch is going to be slightly disturbed by the stitch that comes next and shares its hole. Better to disturb tent stitches than long ones, don't you think?

Yesterday NC Pat posted a very interesting comment: "
If you are going to have texture in the other two, go with the Rhodes, if not then I would do the tents, as they are both defining the design......Just my humble opinion.....and hiding behind the chair!"

No need to hide, Pat! You make a good point. When does one decide to do lots of texture on all three outfits and when do you do less texture in one (or more) than the other? I think this is a matter of individual taste as there really doesn't seem to be a rule. Putting texture on all three women will make them all equally important and concentrating the bulk of the texture on the central figure of the Geisha will make her the most important figure. I think I am going to make the Geisha the most important person in the design as she holds the central motif--the peach. That seems to make sense to me.

But truly it all depends on what you are doing with a piece.

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