Our Intrepid Reporter Colleen

Needle Works of Austin's blog is posting photos of new items Collen the shop owner saw at the TNNA show and ordered. It's not always clear who designed what but given how tired the shop owners must be, I am surprised Colleen even managed to post news on her shop blog. But we are very glad she did!

http://theneedleworks.typepad.com/the_needle_works/2009/01/day-one-of-market-did-i-get-into-trouble.html

http://theneedleworks.typepad.com/the_needle_works/2009/01/cant-sleep.html

http://theneedleworks.typepad.com/the_needle_works/2009/01/more-marketmy-mind-has-been-racing-all-night.html

Keep up the good work!
Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Another Day, Another Halo

One of the things I thought I'd play with while stitching six different household pet guardian angels was the halos and the wings. I am going to attempt a different halo and a different wing treatment on each angel.

This may not be easy as I may run out of ideas and I do love how the Victorian Parakeet's wings turned out, but I am going to try. The silver (Kreinik #4005, my favorite silver!) halo was created by tent stitching an oval floating above the Baroque Fish's head, then stem stitching right on top of the tent stitches to give the halo a bit of Ooomph and dimension. Although you can't see the pretty silver shine, I think this is a very nice halo. (Although Pat's halo for the Georgian Rabbit angel on her Needle Art Nut blog is better. See the link and judge for yourself.)

http://needleartnut.blogspot.com/2009/01/tickled-purple.html

By the way, Three Women and a Peach is mostly assembled. The piece needs to spend a bit of time under heavy weights to both glue the additional magnets I put inside and flatten the quilt batting a bit. I will leave it alone a day for this to happen but hope to have everything together later this week. (I hope. Best laid plans and all that!)

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

Janet's Beaded Sheep

Remember the Evil Sheep, the large and menacing Sheep Wizard stitched by Dr. Janet Moyer? Janet just shared a photo of a much smaller sheep canvas, this time from Ewe and Eye and she's agreed to let me show you the photo and will telll us about stitching it. You can see the unstitched canvas on the Ewe and Eye website here. Just click on Birds and Animals, then go to page 5. Janet's sheep is in the middle of the top row.
http://www.eweandeyeandfriends.com

Many thanks to Ewe and Eye for permission to show off their sheep and even more thanks to Janet for telling us about The Sheep and The Bead Adventure."

Now, here is Janet:
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The Problems and Saga of the Ears

I've stitched with a group of women, every Monday, at the Needlenook of La Jolla (NNLJ) for over ten years. We are very lucky to have all those threads to pick from and gorgeous, fun, or quirky canvases to buy. When my Shetland Sheepdogs began competitive sheep herding I started looking for sheep canvases. The first major sheep canvas I did was "The Evil Sheep," previously shown on Jane's blog. The owners of NNLJ manage to add to my sheep flock with some regularity. Hence, this piece from Ewe and Eye.

I usually stitch large pieces so this small canvas (5x5 inches) initially stumped me. So I asked the terrific needlepoint teacher Brenda Hart to look at it. She drew an eyelet stitch on a piece of paper. I tried it and loved it. Normally I don't start with a background stitch but this was wonderful! I used the light grey Splendor for the background, then the dark grey Splendor for the sheep's body. [NOTE: Janet listed her threads at the end of this message from her.]

I wanted the head to stick out from the body. Since I love to bead, beading was the choice. Next: ears. I blithely stitched one ear with beads and then filled in the inner ear with long stitches. I left the other ear to do later as I had to finish the sheep's body.

At this point everything looked, well, dull is the word. Aha, I went to my stash and found the star sequins. Perfect! No more dull. I placed them selectively on the background. They are a surprise to anyone viewing the canvas as they blend in so well that one does not see them until the canvas is moved slightly and the sequin catches the light. All of them may not show up in the picture.

I finished the body and most of the circles. Bijoux was backstitched on top of the T stitch body. So far, so good. The last circles were completed after the ears were finished.

Now it was time to finish the other ear. I COULDN'T FIND THE BEADS I'd used on the other ear. I went through my stash, asked my stitching friends if anyone had given me the steely grey beads. No luck. I contacted Mill Hill Beads, checked out all of Sundance Beads, went to Michael's store and checked their beads. NO LUCK.

I gave up and stitched the remaining ear, first in a matte black (no, too dense, too black). Then I tried shiny black (still too black) and decided I would have to make do with them. So I finished the ear and then removed the beads from the first ear. They looked like a translucent grey so back I went to all the bead sources. NO LUCK. I showed them to Pam Carnot, a stitching friend, and she smiled at me and said they were light green, not grey. When I stitched them onto the canvas I used a black beading thread which Pam said turned them to a hematite color!! Now you all know my secret: I am color weak (not color blind). That's one of the reasons I stitch with others. Good thing, hmmm? This was interesting to me, though: I have since ordered clear beads from Sundance Beads and I am going to experiment with different colored bead threads and see what I get. You might want to try it too.

The lawn/hill was done in basketweave to provide some relief to the eyes from all the texture of the background and the sheep. I stitched the leaves in a basketweave stitch but turned the leaves 90 degrees to do it, to add some subtle textural change. Then I stitched a skeletonized leaf stitch on top for a tiny bit of dimension but keeping it subtle for the POW of the overdyed pink thread, which I simply coiled and couched to hold it place. A double French knot was stitched in the center.

Brenda's great background stitch got me started. The rest of the stitches and any mistakes are mine. Now, on to the next sheep….

signing off in La La Land,

Janet

Materials and stitches for the Grey Sheep

Background: Splendor 976 (light grey); Stitch suggested by Brenda Hart, a type of eyelet.
Star sequins added to the background.

Sheep body: Splendor 967 (dark grey). Stitch used: the T stitch.

Face: Sundance beads, #282 (kind of a peachy color), size 14 Sundance Beads
Eyes: Sundance beads #457A (a bronze color), size 14 Sundance Beads
Ears: Sundance beads #306, size 14. Sundance Beads. Backstitched and used the doubled safety railroad split thread to anchor the beads. I filled in the inner ears with dark grey long stitches in inner ear. As we discussed the 306 beads are a light green. I put them on the canvas with black beading thread which turned the color to Hematite. Perfect for the ears!!

Circles on body and legs: Bioux # 484 Obsidian (has gold in it) backstitch on body. Single vertical tent stitch on legs, one under each other, etc.

Green lawn: Anchor floss 267; basket weave
Flower: Threadworkx Overdye floss, pink # 1101. Just wrapped floss in a circle then couched it with a single ply of the pink. Used a dab of Japanese glue to hold the ends down.
Green leaves: Anchor floss #254. Basket weave stitch. Then on top of basket weave I did a skeleton leaf stitch to give appearance of texture, without the weight."
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By the way, anyone who wants to see Evil Sheep can visit the Yahoo 360 blog and then look in the Tag Cloud on the left side of the page for the keywords Evil-Sheep. Click on that and you'll see the first sheep in Janet's herd.

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

New and Shiny!

Ruth Schmuff's shop newsletter just arrived with links to a page full of new designs she is offering this year. If you live in the Baltimore area, you know Ruth as the owner of Bedecked and Beaddazzled north of downtown. If you don't, you know Ruth as the designer for Tis the Season.

Whichever hat Ruth happens to be wearing, I know it is pink and mint and purple and sparkles!

Don't believe me? Check out her newest designs, many of which are from Ruth's company and many of which are from new, fun designers like Eye Candy. (The canvas above is called "Cat Served" while "Cat and Mouse" adorns the Yahoo 360 blog.)
http://www.bedeckedandbeadazzled.com/whatsNew.php

As the biggest TNNA trade show of the year has just opened in San Diego, I hope Ruth's new things are just the first in many postings about the goodies that will arrive in our favorite shops over the next 2-3 months.

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

Stitching Skies, Pugs and Fancy Stitches (with Common Threads)

The tips from professional needlepointers on their blogs keep coming--in alphabetical order we have:

ABS Designs' Anne Stradal explains how she stitches skies with needle blended colors and simple stitches.
http://thecapestitcher.blogspot.com/2009/01/needle-blending-sky.html

Gail Hendrix of Squiggee Designs demonstrates that you can do wonderful things on 10 count as well as 18 count NP canvas. Folks with bad vision all over the world rejoice!
http://squiggeedesigns.blogspot.com/2009/01/pug-anyone.html

This is after Gail shows us how to use commonly available threads to great effect on her newest canvas, an iris circle.
http://squiggeedesigns.blogspot.com/2009/01/squiggee-is-stitchingthe-moon-is-green.html

Judy Harper also discusses this topic in her dissertation on cotton threads.
http://fairy-crafts.blogspot.com/2009/01/tutorial-for-cotton-thread-bargello-egg.html

Finally Orna Willis has added an explanation of Jessicas with a great diagram to her website's collection of instructional PDFs. I found out about this on her blog that had the link to here--
http://www.ornadesign.com/how-to

The above proves once again that stitchers are wonderfully sharing folks!

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