Big and Little

I'm sure a lot of you are wondering when I'm going to start stitching. Soon, very soon! However, there are things that need to be done first. Remember, we are doing this piece in three stitches that look the same on the front (but not on the back). The goal is to stitch a piece with the front stitches all the same size and with the same look of plumpness in each stitch. We want the front of the canvas to look like identical rice grains have been laid very neatly out in rows.

However, I am using threads made from bamboo, rayon, silk, metallic fibers, and combinations of these. So I had to figure out if they could be made to look exactly alike on the front. As you can see, I tested this by stitching two rows of 10 stitches each in the half cross stitch, then tried a few rows of basketweave.

The threads are (from top down):
Impressions - a silk/wool blend in purple that is one strand
Patina - a rayon twisted strand in peach, like cotton perles except 100% rayon
Mandarin Floss - a six stranded floss made of bamboo fiber in brown
Silk Braid - a strand made from 4 plies of silk and 4 of metallic rayon twisted together in gold/ivory
Vineyards Silk - a silk strand in red

All the threads are a strand not meant to be plied except for the brown Mandarin Floss. For my half cross stitch row test, I used all six plies of Mandarin Floss.

After I stitched my test rows, I decided that Impressions looked skimpy compared to the rest and that the Mandarin Floss looked lumpy. Any time you end up with lumpy tent stitches with a thread, reduce the number of plies by one and try again. In my experience this often improves the tent stitches.

So I tried again with two strands of Impressions and only five plies of Mandarin Floss. Everything else was the one strand I used for the first test. You'll see the result in the basketweave diagonal rows under the first test. I am happy with the adjustment in the amount of thread used in the needle. I think I evened out the size of the threads I'm using so that my tent stitches will all be about the same.

If I was stitching this piece all in Appleton crewel wool, for example, I would probably not have to do this. Most colors within a brand of thread are very close in diameter, with the possible exception of black and other very intense colors (very dark navy, dark brown, deep reds) because the number of trips through the dye bath to achieve these very deep and dark colors sometimes thins the thread. So keep an eye on your black thread when you want to keep a black tent stitch the same as a yellow tent stitch.

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

The First Autumn Leaf

Now we can finally get started on the Autumn Leaf piece by Lani. I plan to start in the center with the small brown and ivory leaf. There are three colors in the leaf: dark brown outlines and veins, a golden brown shaded area in the center, and a pale ivory leaf around the edge. You’ll also note that the upper left hand corner and the bottom right hand corner are very dark brown leaf tips. The threads I have for these colors are:

dark brown - Mandarin Floss #M886 (Rainbow Gallery)
golden brown - Mandarin Flos #M842 (Rainbow Gallery)
ivory - Impressions #1146 (Caron) AND
ivory - Silk Lame Braid SL03 (Rainbow Gallery)

Mandarin Floss is a 6 ply thread that looks like cotton floss except it is made of bamboo fiber. Once you separate the strands into 6 separate plies, each ply seems a little fuzzy. compared to cotton floss plies. I think the colors are very like those in nature, particularly the greens and browns. Here is Rainbow Gallery’s color card. It is now available in some overdyed colors, apparently, but for this project I choose all solids.

http://www.rainbowgallery.com/detail.cfm?ID=993

Impressions is a 50% silk/50% wool blend. The thread is a thin strand, sort of like crewel wool but with a sheen from the silk in it. Caron makes both solids and overdyes in Impressions. Here is information and the color card from their website.

http://www.caron-net.com/threads.html

http://www.caron-net.com/impsolid.html

Silk Lame Braid is a new thread in the last 6 months or so. It is one strand made up of 4 plies of silk strand wrapped by 4 plies of metallic gold. It is meant to be stitched as one whole strand instead of being plied on 18 count NP canvas. Here’s the Rainbow Gallery website again, with a link to the color card.

http://www.rainbowgallery.com/detail.cfm?ID=1149

You’ll note I have two threads in ivory--the Silk Lame Braid and the Impressions. Both are the right color but I thought I might use the slight metallic sparkle in some of the leaves or perhaps in the border. I haven’t decided yet if the first small center leaf will be done in the ivory silk/wool blend or in the ivory silk/metallic blend.

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

May 2008 Chilly Hollow Newsletter Article

Brief Introduction to Blogging

Blogs and bloggers are everywhere on the Internet these days. Blogs are essentially diaries, with the latest entry on top. If you are curious about blogging, the best place to start is to find a few blogs you like to read and then keep up with them via an aggregator (also called a reader).

First, you need to find blogs about things that interest you. There are all sorts on many topics, but you can find a list of blogs about needlepoint on either of my blogs, the addresses of which are at the end of this message. If you want to find cooking blogs or dog blogs or political blogs or whatever, use Google which has a search engine that just searches for blogs.

http://blogsearch.google.com/

Ok, now you are addicted and there are 10 blogs you like to read. What next? This is where a reader comes in. A reader is software that checks the blogs you follow and let you know when a new entry is posted to any of them.

Some browsers like Firefox and Safari have built-in readers and there are a ton of widgets that you can add to Yahoo, etc. that will collect RSS, Atom and other types of feeds but in a less organized form than readers do. Feeds are little programs that collect update information on one blog or website. So you have a new blog entry collected by a feed which can be collected in large groups by a readers (This is very simplified, you understand.) The main readers I’ve used or had recommended are Bloglines, Google Reader and NetVibes.

They all work the same way. You go to their website and set up an account, then copy/paste your favorite blog URL addresses into an area there. As you copy each address, you may need to click that every recent entry from that blog has been read to get yourself up to date for new feeds. Once you are done, then you just check back at the website and log yourself in for your feeds. NetVibes has a widget you can add to your browser home page. The widget (widgets are tiny mini programs you can copy/paste into larger programs like browsers) will make results show up on your home page of your browser so you don’t have to go any place else to check on new blog entries. NetVibes seems to have complex tools that a more tech-oriented audience might enjoy learning to use on hundreds of blogs they follow, but since we have both novices and experts among the needlepoint world, I mention both types.

Here are three reader websites to get started. There are MANY more.

http://www.bloglines.com/

http://www.google.com/reader/view/

http://www.netvibes.com/

None of this is really hard to set up but it all takes some playing around to make it work, and some things don’t work with non-Windows machines or with certain browsers. This article will help some, but the best thing to do is jump in and try some things. If you have a Gmail account already, the Google Reader is really easy to access when you log in to read your emails.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/03/30/the-state-of-online-feed-readers/

Next time I’ll point you to information about setting up your own blog.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
blogging at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
with mirror blog at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com


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

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