The Gold Fish Revisited

Carol's Gold Fish

Remember last Thanksgiving I asked for volunteers who wanted help and ideas with a painted canvas? One of the brave souls who volunteered was Carol. She was trying to come up with ways to stitch her Lillian Chermor Gold Fish.  To see the bare canvas (and explore more of Lillian Chermor's lovely pieces) go to her website, then click on Collections on the left side.  The Gold Fish canvas is under "Flora and Fauna and Friends."
http://needlepointbylilliandesign.com/

Carol's been rather busy with life, not to mention getting her EGA Master Craftsman status (congratulations!), but she has started to work her Gold Fish background. The color is absolutely perfect!  What you don't see in the photo above is that Carol's tent stitched over the seaweed strands in the background and over the fish before putting her fancy wave stitch on top of the background seaweed.  This helps keep the color from showing under the stitches.  Once Carol gets further along, she will put the seaweed back using ribbons and beads.  Which brings us to a question Carol has asked that I am hoping a Blog reader can answer.  Carol has absolutely perfect teardrop-shaped beads to use among the seaweed.  She'd like to use a mesh type ribbon to hold the beads in place.  Carol's thinking was to put the beads inside Flair so that they look like they are floating among the ribbon seaweed.  But her beads, which are perfect, are 14x10 mm and 11x9mm wide.  She doesn't think Flair will stretch enough to hold them.  Here are the beads.

She's looked at tubular mesh ribbons which come in two sizes:  6mm and 20mm. You can see the ribbons here.
http://www.beadedlily.com/shop/index.php?main_page=page&id=31&chapter=0

The 6mm size is smaller than her beads and the 20 mm size is a lot larger.  Anyone know of a tubular ribbon that is the width of her beads?  Anyone know how stretchy this type of tubular ribbon is?  If so, please post a comment or email me at chilly hollowat hotmaildotcom and I'll forward the information to Carol.

Carol's going to try stuffing beads inside Flair this weekend.  Flair stretches, so it might work.  She also is considering cutting strips of panty hose to hold the beads in place.  If you see someone in your local clothing store asking where they keep the purple and green panty hose, that'll be Carol.

Collection of Designs Package Ornament

Carol felt badly about not having more progress to show on her Gold Fish, so she also sent me a photo of A Collection of Designs Christmas present ornament she just finished. The pink body of the present is knitting yarn.  Yes, that's memory thread coiled under the ribbons on top.  The background is just perfect.  You can't tell from the photo but it's white with a touch of sparkle.

I think Carol's well on her way to mastering painted canvases, just like she has mastered so many other kinds of needlework.

I'm looking forward to seeing more progress photos of the Gold Fish, and especially how the seaweed works out.

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

Look What Jane Did

I've been busy writing a stitch guide for Squiggee's little goldfish canvas. You can buy the canvas (the stitch guide comes with it) from Gail Hendrix's eBay store or at any needlepoint shop.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=250293634199&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=015

You can also find it by looking through Squiggeeland's eBay store.

http://stores.ebay.com/Squiggeeland-Needlepoint

Of course if you were paying attention here, you could just have followed along as I stitched, but sometimes it is nice to have everything organized in one place in hard copy.

Particularly if you are evacuating from the path of a hurricane! Stay safe, everyone!!!!

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Goldfish Primps for the Fair

I haven't stitched anything this week on the wizard because the county fair starts Sunday night. This means I am busy putting the finishing touches on the two projects I'll exhibit at the fair--Squiggee's goldfish piece and Lani's Autumn Leaves.

The photo above is all the framing supplies for the goldfish. You can barely see the gold shadow box that he will go in on the left. On top is the spool of metal braid trim right above the paper xerox of the canvas I cut out to use as a pattern, the acid free foam core mat with a hole in the middle that will be covered in the blue fabric you see, and a piece of craft foam and a very thin sheet of metal that will go under the canvas.

Let me explain further. Framing is expensive so I headed to the local crafts emporium to pick up supplies in a standard size. The goldfish has pearls for his bubbles, so any frame needs to have depth so I can put glass over them. (I always glass my framed pieces since we live on a dirt road and don't have air conditioning. Dust is constantly coming in the open windows in nice weather.) So I bought an 8x10 shadow box frame, picked up an 8x10 scrap of acid free foam core, a spool of thin gold metal braid, and bought a packet of thin metal for embossing in the scrapbook section. I had the shop cut a hole in the middle of the foam core the size of the goldfish. All this cost me about $36, not too bad for framing.

I lugged it all home and got to work. First I cut a piece of fabric about 12x14, large enough to cover one side of the foam core, ironed it well, and glued it right over the foam core (I put glue only on the back as it bleeds through the fabric). Then I took my best embroidery scissors and poked a hole in the fabric over the hole in the foam core. Cutting carefully from the center of the hole towards the outside edge, I made an X and then more cuts to have a series of petals I could fold to the back side and tape down. Once that was done, I had to let everything dry (it's all glued to the back of the foam core) overnight.

I concentrated on making a very nice Chinese knot in one end of my trim. The trim I choose is made from real wire bits and it unravels itself if you don't put Scotch tape over the ends, so this was a bit tricky. The best instructions for a simple knot I found are here.

http://www.satincord.com/knots/buttonknot.htm

The next night was gluing the braid all around the center of the hole and then cutting my metal sheet (with scissors you use for paper, it is very thin aluminum that cuts but will dull your good scissors) to the size of the design. I also cut out a piece of acid free foam that is used for signs (cut red letters from it and glue to a green sheet of it and you have a sign for a kid's bedroom door) to the same size. Then I glued the metal circle to the foam circle. This will go behind the goldfish to give a mirror-like effect behind him with a lot less weight and expense than a real mirror. The foam is padding that raises the "mirror" and holds it in position against the NP.

The next step will be to tape the NP canvas to the foam core covered in fabric, put the mirror and its padding behind the canvas, then drop the mat/goldfish/mirror with padding stuff in the back of the shadow box frame and put the cardboard backing on.

And you'll have a goldfish in a frame!

The finished photo will be revealed tomorrow. The sky is too cloudy to take a good photo of the finished piece today. Tonight I'll work on Autumn Leaves.

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Goldfish Bubbles

I added bubbles to the goldfish canvas Monday night. These came with the canvas and I placed them about where they originally were attached to the canvas. I believe Gail said they were Austrailian pearls. The colors vary and are quite pretty.

Now everything is done but the finishing. However, since I have several pieces to finish, it will be a bit before this is really done.

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Water Stitch

As you can see in the above photo, all the water is finished. I used David McCaskill's water stitch from the ANG website.

http://www.needlepoint.org/StitchOfTheMonth/2003/mar.php

If you have trouble seeing the blue silk and metallic stitches behind the goldfish, this canvas that The Bristley Thistle just finished has water stitch at the bottom.

http://bristlythistle.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/small-needlepoint-projects/

Had lots of trouble with it as diagrammed, though, so I worked the stitch by turning the goldfish on his head and turning the directions ninety degrees also. This made the stitch / and \ slants with tent and reverse tent stitches. Here's a diagram of how I worked.


First, I worked all the / stitches shown in black. I did them in horizontal rows. Next, I worked the \ green stitches, also in horizontal rows. Then I did the red tent stitches (you guessed it--in horizontal rows) and followed that with my orange reverse tent stitches.

This made more sense to me but everyone is different. David's original diagram of this stitch may make much more sense to you. Thanks, Anne, for the tip about turning the instructions and canvas on their side! It really helped me.

The last step is attaching the pearls that Squigee included with the canvas. Thanks, Gail! This has been a delight to stitch!

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Fish Eyes

As you can see above, the goldfish's face is now done. I debated for quite some time whether I should use tent stitch for his round circle eyes. I finally decided they were prominent enough even in tent stitches. After all, if you have carrot red long hair, you might not need to braid it with lime green ribbons in spikes all over your head to draw attention to yourself! I continued using just two plies in the eyes. The only thread I've had any trouble with when it comes to covering the background is the very darkest green in the lily pads. The darkest green was DMC cotton floss, not Splendor silk. That might account for the difference, or perhaps because it is such a dark color, the thread plies are a bit thinner than usual. I've heard many places that very deep and dark colors (reds, black, navys) have to make many trips through the dye bath to get their shades and this thins the thread slightly. Maybe that accounts for it.

I worked a bit on the water stitch background but didn't get enough done to be able to take a good picture for you to see. Maybe tonight....

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Look What I Did

Well, first of all, you can see the goldfish finished except for his eyes and mouth, and that almost all of the three lily pads are done. I've not stitched any more water stitch but I am going to start on that once I have the last bit of top leaf done. And I'm going to use Anne's tip of rotating the instructions and canvas a quarter turn and working the water stitch as vertical stitches instead of horizontal.

The real thing I did yesterday was replace the CMOS battery inside the old laptop so I can scan photos for you again. It took me about 5 minutes to unplug the laptop, remove its battery pack, locate the right door on the bottom and unscrew the screw holding it closed, open the door, locate where the internal lithium battery was hiding under a stiff paper tab, remove the tab, slide the battery out, then being careful to note where the red wire and the black wire were plugged, unplug the battery. Then the new nickel-sized battery was plugged in properly, slide into its slot, the paper tab replaced, the door back on, and the external battery pack restored. After that, it's turn on the machine and set the date/time again (that's what the CMOS battery does, keeps time for the system internally), replace the tiny screwdriver and the tweezers, and toss the old battery.

The hard part was looking up what the error messages meant, finding the right battery for my model at a good price, and looking up online instructions on how to replace it. I am so proud!

I'm not just a fancy stitcher after all. LOL

Hugs from your Master Enabler and part-time mechanic in Chilly Hollow

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Oops!

Last night I picked up the goldfish to do a little tent stitching on his lilypads. Saturday I visited the counted thread place not that far from my house because they were having a sale. I needed a dark medium green for the lily pads and although they didn't have the right green in Splendor or Mandarin Floss, I was able to pick up a card of Rainbow Gallery's Grandeur. Grandeur is a silk perle and because both it and Splendor are from Rainbow Gallery, the colors are identical. You can sometimes get a silk floss and a silk perle in the same color for unusual and special effects on a design. I am not doing this here but you can. Just saying....

Anyway, I pulled out my green Grandeur, took three tent stitches and stopped. Remember how I was tent stitching this leaf with two plies of Mandarin floss in the olive green? The Grandeur was too fat! It made my tent stitches in dark green much higher and fatter than the olive green ones in Mandarin floss. Oops!

Today I'll hit up the crafts emporium with my card of Grandeur (which is about the size of a number 8 perle cotton) and see if I can find a skein of DMC in the right shade. If I had a brain in my head, I would have bought a card of Rainbow Gallery's Elegance, which is the size of number 12 perle and much thinner, and tried to match the tent stitches in Mandarin Floss to that.

But I am an idiot. Oh, well, live and learn!

By the way, I have a card of medium blue Grandeur that's also too fat for the water. Double idiot. LOL

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Water Stitch

Lizzy, who has very sharp eyes, noticed that I had started stitching the water at the top in yesterday's photo. I don't have a photo today as my old laptop isn't working but you can look at yesterday's picture to see some of the stitching.

I'm using David McCaskill's water stitch from the Stitch of the Month on ANG's website. Here is the link.

http://www.needlepoint.org/StitchOfTheMonth/2003/mar.php

I am having trouble with the stitch as David diagrammed it. The easiest thing for me was to work the stitch in columns from the top down. I did the / slants first, then went back and did the slants in the opposite direction \ using one ply of Splendor blue silk for each slant. You can see both slants in the previous photo. Then I did the third step in an Anchor metallic which is a similar blue working the tent stitch at the end of the / slant first and then did the tent stitches that go at the end of the \ slant. This Anchor thread is very similar to Kreinik's blending filament except it is a bit thicker and stiffer and doesn't separate into two parts like blending filament does. I don't think you can see much of this thread in the photo but in person it has a nice gleam.

I've also started stitching a leaf so I could see how it looks with the fish and water stitching. I'm using two plies of Mandarin floss to tent stitch the olive green part of one leaf. It looks fine although I do have to be very careful that the plies don't twist in the needle. With just two plies, this is very noticable.

I plan to work on the water and maybe finish the leaf tonight. Stay tuned.

Lizzy, let me know if this doesn't answer all your questions.

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

A Long, Sweeping Tail

I wasn't able to finish the long tail of our goldfish last night, but it is 2/3 done and I've stitched the dorsal fin on his back (If you don't read the comments, you didn't hear that the designer Gail Hendrix says the goldfish is male-that's why he is so colorful) and the front fins under his chin.

You can't see how the silk shines in the photo but I must say the packed outline stitch I used looks very good in silks. I used one ply of my Splendor silk (the darkest rose is Bella Silk) in the same colors as the Melissa Shirley Asian girls I just finished.

I started at one end of an area and worked a color at a time, slowly filling out the side and moving towards the middle and then to the other edge. I discovered that it's ok to not completely pack the stitches. You can always go back and fill in a bit here and there where it looks skimpy. I think that's better than putting in too many stitches. I also discovered that the darker colors were often overwhelmed by the lighter colors (How odd is that!?) and I needed to put another stitch or two in of the darkest rose so it wasn't just a tiny line.

I like how this is developing. Wish you could see him in person!

Tonight I'll finish the tail and hopefully start work on the water.

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Fish Scales

I've finished the fish scales on Gail's goldfish as you can see in the photo above. It dawned on me that I didn't explain how I worked the stitch or how I choose the color of the single ply of Splendor silk I used for it.

First, I worked Judy's Blocks from the top of each column down. I worked the cashmere stitch and then the four tent stitches in a block and then the cashmere stitch again These stitches are offset slightly so the next row you have to adjust the position of your starting point. You could alwo work the cashmere stitches on the diagonal and then go back and fill in with tent stitches but I found that harder to do so I just did a column at a time. To keep the silk as straight as possible, I let my needle dangle to untwist the thread after each cashmere stitch was finiished.

I worked from the head back, omitting the bulging fish eyes and mouth. Those will be worked in a different stitch later. I started with orange, then switched to rose, then to coral, then dark orange, then light orange, then a touch of pale yellow and finally pale pink. I choose these colors by looking at the unstitched canvas, and decided which color was most prominent in the fish's body. I laid that color out above the fish then moved to the next area and choose the most prominent color there, etc. Once I was happy with how the skeins of thread seemed to flow, those are the colors I went with. Most areas have 3-5 colors in them but I choose the color that seemed most prominent except at the head where I ignored the dark brown and choose the rose instead.

I finished either the tent stitch block or the cashmere block before I changed color, even if the paint seemed to switch abruptly. I thought it more important to get the stitch right than the color, and I think it worked out well.

Next, the fins and tail.

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Squiggee's Goldfish Ornament

Now that the Halloween trick-or-treaters stocking is done, I have picked up the other Squiggee design in my stash, the lovely pink fish you see above. I think this must be a goldfish, one of the ones that charmed me in the fishtanks at the pet store when I was a child. They are all bulging eyes and beautiful colors, with a long graceful tail and a fat wiggle to their upper bodies. Squiggee's is pink, my favorite color, and was taken from a Gail Hendrix design of a frog weight that had lots of underwater motifs on it. I asked Gail if she would turn the goldfish into an ornament for me and she did.

Most Squiggee painted canvases are lighthearted but this taps into Gail's more classic design sense. It is on 18 count canvas and is approximately 4 inches in diameter. When I asked her to paint this for me, I explicitly said it should not be an exclusive for me, but a design that anyone can buy from her Squiggee website, so you can have your own goldfish for your home if you so desire. Here's Squiggee's website so you can have a fun browse.

http://www.squiggeedesigns.com/

It is beautifully stitched-painted and must have taken hours to do. If you look closely at the fish scales, you'll see careful lines of color that range from a very dark brown through roses and corals and oranges to yellow and shades of pale pink that become almost white. The goldfish swims among lily pads in medium blue waters. When I started pulling colors, I discovered that I can use all the silks form the two little Asian girls in this design. The colors are almost identical. I did have to find earthy greens (mostly Mandarin silks) and a pretty blue in Rainbow Gallery's Grandeur (silk perle size #5).

My thought in starting to stitch Gail's goldfish was to use stitches that don't fully cover so that the piece can be framed over a mirror to give an underwater wet gleam to the fish. After all, most of my silks I pulled are pliable so I can use just one of them easily.

This design has a two-part background (the lilypads and the blue water) and a four-part foreground (the goldfish, with prominent eyes and mouth, long flowing tail, upright dorsal fins and sideways front fins, and finally the body). I decided to start with the goldfish's body and find a stitch for the scales first. Look carefully at the body of the fish. Isn't everything sort of upright and rectangular? There are many color changes (another reason to use light coverage stitches--you don't have to change threads often since the color will show under your skimpy thread) so I decided it would not be easy to do scale-shaped stitches here. I thought and browsed my stitch books and thought some more. Nothing seemed to be the right shape or suitable for a light coverage.

Then I visited Judy Harper's blog....

http://fairy-crafts.blogspot.com/2008/07/cq-with-silk-ribbon-and-beads.html

Inspiration strikes at the oddest times! Look at her latest crazy quilt heart, the yellow, coral and green one with the white daisies. Now look at the yellow rectangular stitch at the bottom point. Doesn't that sort of look like the scales on Gail's goldfish to you? I don't know what this stitch is called (can't find it in any of my stitch books) so let's call it Judy's Blocks.

Here is what I've stitched so far on the goldfish's scales, using one ply of silk Splendor in rose, coral and now orange as I work my way toward the fish's tail doing Judy's Blocks. I hope to finish the entire body by the end of the holiday weekend. Pretty soon I'll switch to one ply of yellow and then a pale pink....

This is so much fun!

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow