Nameplates Discussion

How to see (or ignore) them, what they are, how to use them.
http://www.wowhead.com/?blog=62488

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Companion Piece to Three Women and a Peach UPDATED

I've discovered from reading Judy Harper's blog that Squiggee has a new round Asian piece that is a companion piece to Three Women and a Peach. It is called "Nippon Textures." I assume it is also seven inches in diameter on 18 count canvas but it's not on the Squiggee website yet for me to check.

http://fairy-crafts.blogspot.com/2008/12/nippon-textures-more-gail-hendrix.html

I love the way the clothing patterns move the eye around this piece. I understand that Anne Strahal will be blog-stitching this. I'll let you know when she starts it so you can watch it unfold as well.

UPDATE: Anne has started stitching! Here's the first posting about this piece on her blog, The Cape Stitcher.
http://thecapestitcher.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-year-new-project.html

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

Boxes for the New Year

Do you like boxes? How about this portable paper box for travel or as an inexpensive gift for a stitching friend? They have a new ort box/needlecase coming in January that isn't on the website yet.
http://www.lbcrafty.com/new.html

Happy New Year, everyone!

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