February 2009 Chilly Hollow Newsletter Article

Sometimes it seems like winter lasts forever in Chilly Hollow. If you feel the same way, this month's newsletter article is for you because I'm going to talk about stitching flowers.

First, the eye candy--here is a silk and metal embroidery sampler from Jane in the U.K. with a lovely floral center. Click on the little picture to see the whole thing. Gorgeous!
http://www.newblehome.co.uk/embroidery/page.html

When you have flowers, you need butterflies, right? This comes from Carol-Anne, also in the U.K. She's a very talented practitioner of Japanese Embroidery.
http://threadsacrosstheweb.blogspot.com/2009/02/travelling-books-introduction...

Now that your fingers are itching to stitch Spring, how about learning a new technique? Needle'n Thread to the rescue! Here is Mary Corbet, explaining Or Nue. She makes it look easy.
http://www.needlenthread.com/2009/01/or-nue-goldwork-in-color.html

Mary also posted two fascinating articles on her blog about needle painting, which is a technique from crewel embroidery that uses long and short stitch (mostly) to create beautifully shaded flowers. The first article demonstrates how much better needle painting looks when stitched in one thread instead of two. Remember, the flowers that Margaret stitched are done in crewel wool. You may not get the same results when you are stitching with silk or cotton or rayon, but reducing the number of plies may well help you if you are not happy with how your needle painting looks.
http://www.needlenthread.com/2009/01/when-less-is-more-in-thread-painting.html

The next day Mary followed up with a tip from Trish Burr, who is one of the pre-eminent practitioners of needle painting alive (the other being Helen Stevens). You may find this useful when you next try needle painting.
http://www.needlenthread.com/2009/01/thread-painting-tips-follow-up.html

Finally, more eye candy. If you haven't seen Trish Burr's website, what are you waiting for?!!!
http://www.trishburr.co.za/

And if you aren't familiar with Helen, here's a Gallery of her work from her site. Amazing! Is it just me, or is Mother Nature an endless source of beauty and inspiration for us needle artists?
http://www.fritillary.co.uk/hmsslideshow/hmsportfolio.html

Here's to Spring!

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

Valentine Canvases and Charts

In honor of Valentine's Day (which my co-workers refer to as Singles Awareness Day) Needle Works of Austin has posted four pages full of painted canvases with hearts somewhere in the design. These range from the silly (The Valentine Moose) to the Victorian (Melissa Shirley's postcards of Valentine children) to the patriotic (DeElda's flag heart) to the realistic (Sandra Gilmore's Valentine tea table with roses and chocolates seen through the front window of a house). There are also a great many graphic hearts with all kinds of designs inside them, so take a quick look and admire all the NP valentines available for us stitchers.
http://www.theneedleworks.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=21_119

Several designers who have blogs are featuring Valentine designs for our viewing pleasure.

Laura Perin has designed all sorts of heart patterns, from Hardanger to the lovely Hearts Afire heart sampler to a free chart for your stitching pleasure. Visit her blog and work backwards down the page to see them all.
http://two-handedstitcher.blogspot.com/

Anne Stradal has two little heart-themed eggs she is stitching right now and a very beautiful hearts pillow on her blog. Eventually I bet the eggs will be on her website in the Eggs for All Seasons section.
http://thecapestitcher.blogspot.com/

Finally, Summer Louise has posted a wonderful Valentine piece she just finished for a customer. It expresses perfectly my feeling towards Blog's readers.
http://www.summerlouise.com/2009/02/love-stand-up.html

Will you be my valentine?

By the way, the illustration above is Melissa Shirley's Knave of Hearts canvas.
http://www.needleorts.com/detail.cfm?ID=745


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

We Have a Finished Fish #2

Yesterday I posted a scan of the Baroque Fish as I thought I was finished with her. But looking at the photo yesterday, I realized our mermaid fish needs a few finishing touches. Study the photo from yesterday, then compare it to today's and you'll see I added a mouth (lazy daisy stitch in one ply of the green Splendor silk right on top of the rose tent stitches that made up her mouth in yesterday's photo), I adjusted the bottom ribbon at her waist so it slanted / like the two parts of the bow above it, and I added silver Millhill beads along the vertical stripes on her bodice.

I like the improvements. Do you?

When you think you've finished a project, it helps to look at it with a critical eye to find missed stitches and see if there are any problems (like the ribbon slanting the wrong way) or areas you can improve (adding beads to Baroque Fish's bodice and giving her an accent on her pouty mouth). I've always found scans or color copies to be an excellent way to look at your pieces with new eyes. I didn't notice these things when I was checking her for missed stitches yesterday but they jumped out at my in the photograph I posted to Blog.

Hope you like the improvements!

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

Finally We Have a Finished Fish

Here is the Baroque Fish Household Pet Guardian Angel, finished and ready to swim in her watery glory!

I especially love her halo and the beautiful little boxey stitch on her skirt, which like most of the stitches for these angels I've never seen before. Even if you don't want to stitch a pet guardian angel of your own, you can use these unusual stitches, most of them small in scale, elsewhere. I also love the gradual change of her skirt from the Caribbean blue at the bottom to the watery green near her waist.

Thank you, Kandy! This one turned out great. Now I need to turn my attention to finishing this weekend. And yes, I'm going to stitch the Renaissance Rat next.

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

Do You Love a Good Mystery?

The reason I asked is that ANG's website has posted the line drawing for the 2009 Stitch of the Month project. It's a stylized patchwork kimono and obi sash with mandarin collar! You are supposed to print out the line drawing to transfer to your canvas, and then pick an overdye with three colors for the project without knowing really what it will look like in the end as none of the stitches that go in each area have been revealed yet. That is the mystery.
http://www.needlepoint.org/StitchOfTheMonth/2009/jan.php

Note that you need to click on the line drawing and numbered diagram to get larger images to print out, then enlarge the line drawing 200% on a copy machine to get a line drawing that is 8 ¾ inches wide by 10 ½ tall at the tallest/widest points. You may have to enlarge the drawing a bit more than 200% to get the right sized line drawing to put on a 14x14 inch piece of 18 count canvas. Printers can print slightly larger/smaller depending on the printer's settings.

If the idea of transferring a line drawing onto NP canvas has you breaking out into a cold sweat, visit my Yahoo 360 blog and see how I do it. Easy as loosing your favorite scissors!
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-7rjKEjEyc6.dskPWsp8S8mzUleA-?cq=1&tag=tracing-outline

Why do you want to do this? Well, the designer is the fabulously talented teacher Tony Minieri. Joey explains--with illustrations--why you want to study under the man known as The Headmaster.
http://journeywithjoeyb.blogspot.com/2008/04/tony-minieri.html

Janet Perry has blogged a bit about Tony himself and also done two blog entries that discuss choosing colors from your stash and choosing colors based on an overdyed thread to help you get started.
http://www.nuts-about-needlepoint.com/?p=1558

http://www.nuts-about-needlepoint.com/?p=1560

http://www.nuts-about-needlepoint.com/?p=1563

I've heard that ANG's Cyberpointers online chapter is considering stitching this together. You will have to join the chapter to participate, assuming they actually vote to do this project together, but anyone who already belongs can vote for doing the project and participate in the discussion.

I'll probably be stitching this myself on Blog, using congress cloth. So if you want to tackle this mystery project, you are going to have plenty of help in cyberspace.

Time to pick an overdye with three separate colors, find a piece of 14 inch square eighteen-count NP canvas that coordinates with your colors, start looking for a variety of threads in those colors, and print out that line drawing!

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