The First Brown Leaf

The center brown leaf of the design is in this photo. It’s partially stitched to give you an idea of different approaches to tent stitching a design. The leaf is roughly in the center of the pattern. You’ll see two brown knots on top of the canvas to the right and left of the leaf. (More about those in a minute.) In this photo the brown outline of the leaf and several of the veins are partly stitched. First, I used half cross stitch for the brown outlines. I hope you can see in the left uppermost tip that the brown outline is not solid. I did not stitch a brown stitch at the point of that tip. Follow the tip down the right side of the point towards the leaf’s center and you will see a diagonal broken line of stitches. On a NP grid you can’t do a solid line when you are working on a Northwest to Southeast line in tent stitches. If you look at the other side of the leaf, you’ll see a Southwest to Northeast row of stitches that looks solid. The difference is the slant. While you have this piece in your hand stitching, the broken line is very obvious but if you put it down on a table and step away several feet, the broken line is hard to see. Our eyes compensate and see a line where there is none. So don’t let these slants bother you too much. (Unless of course you are stitching something that will be viewed from 6 inches or less all the time. Which is about as likely as my being elected Miss Universe tomorrow.)

Of course if we were stitching this in a multitude of stitches, I could do a row of backwards tent on top of the NW to SE line (reducing the plies of my Mandarin Floss from 5 to probably 3 so the “bump” of the top didn’t stick out too much) and the line would suddenly look much more solid.

The next logical step is fill the inside of the leaf with continental stitches. See the golden brown Mandarin Floss thread leading from the leaf center to the right side? That is where I stopped my continental stitch row. I came up in the “dirty” hole and then stopped and parked my needle on a pair of magnets above/below my canvas. This is how I cope with color changes. You’ll see more of this later, but basically if you stop half way through a tent stitch, you can pick up and finish that stitch later. Stay tuned on this one. Right now I just want you to know that’s how I stop using a thread. This was a really good place to show the technique even though I have several more rows of this color to do.

After doing the brown outline and veins in my brown thread in half cross stitches, I stitched continental stitches in the ivory (2 plies of Impressions) and golden tan (Mandarin Floss) I worked from top to bottom. In this picture I’m two-thirds done. I don’t really like using continental stitch here where all the threads I’m using are multiple plies (or a doubled strand in the case of the ivory Impressions). It is way too easy to disturb a stitch that was already finished when coming through a hole that already has a thread in it. But that’s how continental stitch is done. (Did you bookmark the places that show how half cross and continental are done? If not, go back a few blog entries to May 10 and refresh your memory.)

Note particularly the oval in dark brown at the upper left of the leaf. I worked my way around the outside of the leaf adding the outline but when I got here, I did not stop and fill in the center in my medium brown. I’ll do that later when I have that color out to do those areas. Please note that I have added another brown to my threads. I decided instead of stitching the outline of some of the dark red leaves in black as the canvas is painted, that I would add a very dark brown to the mix. I found Mandarin Floss M821 in my stash. It is a dark brown with grey undertones. It is now the thread that will outline and draw veins on this design. The medium brown now will be used in touches like the oval area here that needs a darker center than the ivory/golden tan majority of the leaf. Here are the threads, colors, and number of strands or plies used for the brown leaf.

5 plies in dark grey-brown (Mandarin Floss M821)
5 plies in medium dark brown - Mandarin Floss #M886 (Rainbow Gallery)
5 plies in golden brown - Mandarin Flos #M842 (Rainbow Gallery)
2 strands in ivory - Impressions #1146 (Caron)

Now to go back to the knots you see in the photo--there are three general ways to start threads on NP canvas. You can have knots on top of the canvas, knots on the back of the canvas, or use techniques that don’t involve knots at all. We’ll talk about this aspect of stitching another time.

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

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