The Needle Blended Robe

Recently Anne Stradal (ASB Designs) showed various ways of handling skies behind her lighthouse canvases on her blog.
http://thecapestitcher.blogspot.com/2009/01/needle-blending-sky.html

She was stitching her newest lighthouse and decided to needle blend the sky above.
http://thecapestitcher.blogspot.com/2009/01/painting-florida-sky.html

I was finishing up the bottom of the Baroque Fish's gown and looking at colors for the rest of this pet guardian angel. I have choosen a lovely pale green for the inset in her sleeve and the front of the lower hem and thought it might be lovely to use a green similar to the Caribbean blue I have used already. It struck me it might be nice to needle blend the colors so that the top half of the skirt slowly turned from blue to green. Then I could use the green for her blouse and sleeve and go back to the blue for the collar and cuffs. Mermaids are often a blend of blues and greens and I think of the Baroque Fish as a mermaid in disquise.

You can needle blend colors easily with flosses and I am using 4 plies of Splendor already, so I found a pretty green (Splendor S880) in the same brand of silk and started above the floral band with 3 plies of the green and one of blue. In traditional needle blending you have 4-6 plies and work with all the plies in color one, then add one ply of color two, and work the area adding a ply of one color and substracting a ply of the other until you move from solid color one to solid color two. I'm skipping some steps here as I don't have a great deal of space and each row is pretty broad. What you see in the photo above is 2 plies of blue with 2 of green. For the middle third of the upper skirt I will switch to three green plies and one blue ply, then the top near the waist will be all green. It is not going to be as subtle or natural as Anne's lighthouse sky, but what is subtle or natural about a fish in a long gown?

Jane, smiling and having fun in CH

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

If You Always Wanted to Be a Pilot Stitcher,

then Terry Dryden wants to talk to you.

Pilot stitchers are people who test drive class instructions. Normally teachers look for a guild willing to try out a class project in order to find problems and areas that need more explanation in their instructions. Terry talks about the process on her blog and is also recruiting pilot stitchers.
http://www.terrydryden.com/-blog/2009/1/23/writing-instruction-books.html

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

More New Stuff

New painted canvases from DJ Designs.
http://www.designsdj.com/preview2009.html

MAP Designs.
http://www.mapdesignsneedleworks.com/mapdesignhandpaintneedlepointnew.html

Raymond Crawford
http://www.raymondcrawford.com/designs/whatsnew/index.html

Kathy Schenkel
http://www.kathyschenkel.com/new/0.html

I'll post more as I find out about more new things on display.

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

Callaway Classes and TNNA's New Website

Gay Ann Rogers has kindly posted photos of some of the 2010 class projects at Calloway next January on her website. Click on More Callaway at the top of the page in the yellow navigation bars and look at three pages' worth of pictures.

http://www.gayannrogers.com/

TNNA has a new website to promote needle arts and tell us about all the new things available. It's a work in progress so not all the designer links are ready. Try Market Buzz for a slide show from last summer, but the real fun is trying out the shop/designer/blog/stitch finders on the right side of the page.

http://www.worldofneedlepoint.com/

Thanks for the treats, Gay Ann! And a big thank you to TNNA for bringing news to us the needlepoint comsumer.

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

Ray's Moppets on Tweed Canvas

Here are Leigh Designs' new 1920s Bathing Beauties on the new tweed canvas SharonG described for us yesterday.
http://www.leighdesigns.com/Grp503x.html

Note that Leigh also has a new set of Dynasty ornaments, this time based on Swedish motifs and on a green canvas. Some are elegant (the various squashes) and some just fun (the stacks of farm animals)
http://www.leighdesigns.com/Grp826x.html

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