The Blue Wizard Santa Is Done

And here is the finished Blue Wizard Santa ornament. Hope you like him! A professional finisher would have done a neater job, but beads cover many sins. [LOL]

Remember, he is going to the ANG Auction in Indian Wells, CA next fall. So watch out for him there. Bid high and often and if you are the winning bidder (or if you are at the auction) send me a photograph holding the Blue Wizard Santa for my scrapbook.

Here’s to you, Nina!

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

The Blue Wizard Santa's Beads, Part Two

Ok, I’m back to finish up the beading on the Blue Wizard Santa. The crystal is attached (Can you see the bumper bead on top of it?) and the beading hanging loop made and attached. Now I needed to add some more beads to his body before putting the ornament together.

I scattered little Mill Hill beads on his robe, in his beard and on his hat. I did not stitch them down--I just put the ornament on a tray and scattered beads here and there over the Santa, trying to decide where they looked best. Since the wizard already has metallic blue and silver dots all over his robe, beads there looked odd.


I liked the thought of beads in his beard and hair but my beads are blue, not silver, and the color contrast between dark blue beads and grey hair didn’t please me. So I ended up simply adding a row of little dark blue Mill Hill beads to his hat above the row of silver metallic stitches.

Next, my loop. I have a card of beading wire (size #24) that is very thin silver. (See the photo above.) I cut a long 6 inch piece (with my paper cutting scissors since metals dull embroidery scissors quickly) to make my hanger loop and threaded a variety of small blue beads from the mixed bag of sizes with my Mill Hill Petite Glass Beads #40020 added at random until I had enough beads to bend the wire to make a loop. The beads were strung along the loop and I had two long lengths of bare wire in my hand. A quick twist of the wire and the beads were held in place.

Then I stuck the two thin wires through a group of larger beads, starting with a bead just a little larger than the Mill Hill beads, then a slightly bigger bead, a larger one still, etc. The final bead at the bottom was a large tubular one. (These are called bugle beads in the beading world.) You’ll see how the beads grow in size if you look at the picture of our Santa ornament above. This can be done with thread, of course, but I thought wire might be a little more durable. You just have to have wire small enough to go through Mill Hill beads and bottom beads with large enough holes that two pieces of wire will fit.

Next, coil the remaining wire below the beads and stitch the coil firmly to the backside of your needlepoint. This is done before the ornament is put together. Make the wire as secure as you can and the bugle bead as close to the top of the wizard’s hat as you can. Now assemble the ornament. You may find as I did that now the loop is a little higher above the wizard’s hat than it was originally and that the crystal you attached firmly is now a bit wobbly. Beads are very wiggly things. You may think you have them attached securely but they are masters of fooling you! As I started to add beads to the seam, I took care of this problem by clustering a few of the larger beads behind the loop and that stabilized it. I did the same thing with the crystal.

The edging went on next. There are several ways to attach beads to a seam. I just picked up various sizes at random, using more of the small Mill Hill Beads than any other size and color, and scattered them all along the edge, putting a few a little forward, clustering some in the back, etc. This gives a randomness to the trim that I liked. I forgot to say I used one ply of my overdyed navy blue Needle Necessities cotton floss to attach the beads. I started at the top of the hat and worked my way down the right side, then when I got to the bottom edge, I started making fringe with assorted blue beads. I stacked the beads, working from a larger bead to smaller ones, using the bumper and doubling back techniques to end off the fringe. Once I put fringe all across the bottom, I worked my way back to the right side again adding some of the small Mill Hill beads in front of the fringed edge with a few of the smallest navy beads from the assortment pack thrown in. I put a row in front of the fringe to help hide the seam. The fringe alone didn’t do that. Once the bottom fringe was finished and the row set in front of it, I worked my way up the left side and ended at the top of the wizard’s hat.

Finishing isn’t that hard. It just takes time and some manual dexterity. My finishing is not as good as what a professional finisher can do but small ornaments turn out ok and it saves money I’d rather spend on framing, something I can’t do for myself (although it isn’t hard as long as you have access to materials and tools that make the job better and easier).

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

The Blue Wizard's Beads, Part One

Remember Jane’s Law for Christmas Needlepoint? It states one must use metallics, beads, sequins, fake jewels, anything glittery you can find on Christmas piece so your finished needlepoint will be able to compete with the Christmas tree lights and other ornaments. So our little ornament needed beads, and since I also needed to hide the seam where the ornament’s needlepointed front meets the backside’s fabric, why not bead there also? And since we are going way overboard (Jane’s Law!!!), why not add a beaded fringe to hang from the bottom? It is obvious that this little Santa doesn’t want anyone overlooking him come Christmas!

I already had a Swarovski-type crystal from Mill Hill to attach to his front and had chosen a variety of blue beads for him, so all I needed to do is make some decisions as to how to bead all the parts--the hanging loop, the edges and the fringe at the bottom. But first, let’s talk about the beads I added on top of the needlepoint before I put the ornament together.

Mill Hill sells crystals in various shapes and colors--snowflakes, hearts, flowers, drops, etc. I bought a package of three little blue round flower shapes and I wanted to use one on our wizard. There were several potential places to put it--on his pony tail clasp that holds his beard in check, on his robe, or on his hat. I just laid the crystal here and there and decided it looked best on his wizard’s hat.

There are a ton of beading websites which are helpful when you are deciding how to do simple things to your NP. (Any beaders out there? Got tips on good tutorials? And what are doubling back and bumper beads really called?) The techniques they teach you really will come in handy doing various things but for now, all we are going to talk about is doubling back and bumpers. The crystal has a hole in the middle, so there are two ways of securing it to the hat. I could come up in the middle repeatedly and then go down around the shape and hold it fast that way. But my middle hole isn’t very large and I was pretty sure I could only put the needle through it three times. So I used the doubling back/bumper technique. (Refer to the image above.)

This means I knotted my thread, came up through the hat in the center of the area where I wanted the crystal to be, put the needle through the middle of the crystal and pushed the crystal down to rest on the canvas. I checked the placement, just to make sure I got it right and threaded a tiny Mill Hill bead on the needle. Now I had the crystal on top of the canvas and the much smaller Petite Bead on top. Think stacking pancakes, ok? Needlepoint, large crystal, small bead. I simply took the needle and put it back through the crystal and then through the canvas again. This turns the little bead so that it lies on its side. The thread goes through the NP canvas and the crystal and the smaller bead, then makes a U turn, plunging through the crystal only back to the back side of my NP where I secured it. The small bead keeps the crystal in place securely, acting as a bumper. The trick is to find a bead just a little larger than the hole in the bead or crystal you want to attach. That way it holds the larger piece without any danger of being pulled back through the larger item’s hole. And a small bead doesn’t show much. Look for it in tomorrow’s photo and see if you can see it on top of the crystal.

Remember the doubling back/bumper stuff. I’m going to use the same steps to make the fringe for the bottom of this piece.This is getting quite long, so let’s take a break here. More tomorrow!




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

Assembling a Wizard

The photo to the right shows the materials needed to assemble the Blue Wizard Santa, the ornament I finished stitching almost two months ago. It is going to rain all weekend here in Chilly Hollow and since I need a nice sunny day to finish stitching Fan the little Japanese girl canvas, I will use my days off to assemble the Blue Wizard into an ornament instead.

The Blue Wizard Santa is my own design, inspired by my friend Nina Goerres and her Fancy Carole Santa ornaments. Nina died last year but her memory lives on in her friends and in the new memorial award at the ANG Exhibit which will be for the best Christmas piece. Nina loved Christmas needlepoint and stitched a great deal of it herself. This little blue wizard is going to the ANG Auction and I’m hoping the money raised from it will go to the funding of Nina’s ribbon. ANG doesn’t just give out memorial ribbons like this. They have to be funded to cover the costs indefinitely. This is my way of contributing to the costs and thanking Nina for all she did for me over the years of our friendship.

Anyway, I’m ready to assemble the Blue Wizard into an ornament. I want it to be flat finished, which means no padding inside. I also want it to be light-weight, another reason to use plastic canvas as the stiffener inside instead of slightly heavier cardboard or foam core and to omit padding. So I made a color copy of the stitched piece, cut that out, and used it as a pattern to cut the plastic NP canvas (a tad smaller than the ornament) and also the back fabric (larger than the ornament). I am using a heavy cotton chintz fabric that has a sheen.

I plan to hand-stitch the front and back together around the top and sides, stuff the plastic canvas in through the bottom slit and then stitch that up. Afterwards I plan to cover the edge where the front and back meet with beads and also make a beaded loop to hang the ornament by. You can see packages of beads I pulled from The Stash to see which would work best in the image. My next step is to iron the fabric to get the wrinkles out and add beads and a blue crystal to the front of the wizard’s hat and robe. Then I’ll trim the finished canvas to about an inch from the edge, and sew the front and back sides together except across the bottom. Once the sides are stitched, I’ll insert the plastic canvas through the bottom slit, sew that together, and then start attaching beads all along the edges. I will also make a beaded loop to hang the ornament.

I hope to have all that done by tomorrow so I can start the beaded edge.


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

Autumn Leaves: The Tent Stitch Family (Half-Cross)

HALF-CROSS STITCH is stitched this way (see Threadneedle Street’s diagrams in the link below also).

http://www.threadneedlestreet.com/ContinentalHalfCross.html

Half-cross stitch uses the least amount of thread of all three tent stitches, so when you are running out of thread, switch to half-cross. However, there is very little padding on the back with half-cross. If you look on the back side diagram at Threadneedle Street’s link above, you see straight lines. It doesn’t distort as much as continental but it does pull things out of true some. Like continental, it may be worked in either horizontal or vertical rows. It also does very well in small areas or for outlining. But it is terrific when you only have a little bit of thread left and you aren’t worried about distortion or wear. It is worked from right to left (or left to right, doesn’t matter) just like continental in the first row. But in the second row you come up and go down the same way as in the first row instead of coming up in dirty holes like continental does.

http://www.stitchopedia.com/HalfCrossStitch.html

I will use all three stitches while stitching Autumn Leaves so you can see how they work up and what situations they are best suited for.

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