Rearranging the Furniture

I'm rearranging the furniture here at Blog this morning. I get bored with the same old look and when you open a surprise package you get in the mail and find the little Kathy Schenkel stocking shown on the right, well, it's time for a new header to welcome visitors to The Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure!

This darling treat, customized for me, was a present from Judie Solomon of Thistle Needleworks in Connecticut. You may remember that I interviewed Judie here a few weeks back. Judie graciously sent me photos of some of her stitching, including little KS Designs mini stockings she'd stitched for her kids. I jokingly asked to be adopted and Judie took me up on it!

There are many more little KS Designs mini stocks that come with felt animals and other things like my hospitality pineapple. You can see some of them on Judie's needlepoint site--
http://store.apneedlearts.com/miwdo.html

Thank you again, Judie. It was a special treat and it is beautifully stitched. Wish you guys could see the tiny details. I stitch a lot for other folks but rarely receive a needlepoint piece made just for me. I appreciate it!

And many thanks to Kathy Schenkel for allowing me to use her hospitality stocking as a header to welcome folks to Blog.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

The Bee from SharonG

I've had this fabulous little canvas from SharonG in my stash for a while. There are two versions of it. The larger piece has the bee hovering over a rose, I think, but I can't find it online. My piece is of the little bee by itself and I just love it! This canvas is 18 count and is about 5 inches square. The bee itself is maybe 2 inches high and a little less wide.

I always knew how I was going to stitch this--I planned to add a silk ribbon embroidery (SRE) flower under the bee and frame it in a shadow box to make room for a dimensional flower yet protect the piece with glass. I live along a dirt road and don't have air conditioning so there is constant dust coming into the house through open windows. Therefore, I always put glass over framed pieces to protect them. I've kept my eyes open for the perfect shadow box frame and finally found a white one with a cream mat. The mat opening was 4 inches square, perfect for this canvas.



However, to squeeze in a SRE flower was going to take some doing! I decided I needed to put the mat over the canvas in several positions and decide exactly what area I would need to stitch before I did anything else. What you see on the right is the position I decided on. I thought it would give me enough room to add a flower in the lower left hand corner to make it seem as if the bee was coming in for a landing on the flower center. I carefully marked the area I would need to fill with background.


I already knew how I planned to stitch the little jewel of a bee (metallics, mostly tent stitches) but the background was a puzzle. SharonG suggested I use something that indicated it was raining. I thought about that for a while as I browsed my stitch books. As usual, I settled on a stitch from one of Brenda Hart's books-Diagonal Brick (from her Favorite Stitches, page 49). This stitch resembles two parallel slanted lines // and is done horizontally. Below you see the background underway and the bee's body stitched (tent stitches) using black and two shades of gold Kreinik with some overdyed Kreink in the grayish-white area.

To do Diagonal Brick you stitch a pair of long slanted stitches over four thread intersections, then skip over an area that could hold two more stitches, then do another pair of stitches, repeat for the entire row. The second row is the same as the first except that you put your pair of slanted stitches in the empty areas of the first row, skipping down two thread intersections to start the new pair of Diagonal Brick over the third intersection. Repeat endlessly. You will notice I used a pretty variegated blue silk floss (two plies, so I was carefully laying the silk with my laying tool the whole background) from Thread Gatherer called Delphinium. To me it looks just like blue sky with a little white mist of clouds here and there. Doesn't look like rain, does it?

Not to worry! I had A Plan to add rain later. Once the background was finished, I carefully over-stitched a few pairs of Diagonal Brick with a strand of light blue Accentuate #032. Since I scattered the Accentuate at random over the background, there is a little "wet" sparkle here and there as if it was just starting to sprinkle. You probably can't see the metallic thread on the piece but in person it is a really great effect. Thanks for the idea, SharonG!

The wings of the bee were beautifully painted with copper and black but some areas were unpainted to show white. I stitched the wings in layers. The first layer was more Accentuate (clear #300) in long stitches laid on the diagonal from one wing edge to the other. This adds sparkle but allows the paint colors to show. Layer #2 was stitching the veins, either in black or copper Kreinik using #4 braid in stem stitches). I used a small, sharp needle which went right though the first layer of Accentuate. Layer #3 outlined the wings with more black Kreinik in more stem stitches. The veins and outlines stand out while the Accentuate shows off the lovely painted detail through a slight film of sparkle. Not all the black veins are top-stitched, by the way. The smallest ones I left alone to make them less prominent. You can still see the lines through the clear Accentuate.


This photo shows the bee wings stitched and the background done. I stitched right over the painted antenna and wings with my background stitches, then looking at the copy of the canvas I made before I started, I stem-stitched the antenna (more black Kreinik #4 braid) back on top of the Diagonal Brick stitches. In the photo above the antenna are done but the legs haven't been added back in yet.

The next step once the background and bee were stitched was to add the flower. I consulted Helen Ericksson's Ribbon Renaissance: Artistry in Silk, which has the most beautiful silk ribbon flowers you'd ever want to see. I decided on her peony rose, and started to search for peony photos to help me plan where the flower petals should go.
http://www.heleneriksson.com/

My favorite place to look for inspiration photos online is Flickr. Head over to their main page and search the public photos and you'll find lots of ideas, shapes and sizes of flowers.
http://www.flickr.com/




Search on your favorite flower and you'll see what I mean. Look for a photo that shows you the shape you need, then pick out another that shows the stem and leaves of your flower species well and a third that shows how the center where the pistils are well. Print them out, then cut out the shape and see how it looks on top of your stitched piece. This is what I came up with.





Now it's time to test ribbon. I had 9mm, 7mm and 4mm ribbon in various shades of pink and variated pink in my stash and decided I would mix colors and types to achieve a realistic flower.


I knew most of my peony would be done in Japanese ribbon stitch (called ribbon stitch in Helen's book) so I practiced some stitches in various brands of silk ribbon so see how they looked before I started actually stitching my flower. This is what I came up with. The pale pink ribbon is YLI's Spark Organdy ribbon in pink 002. This ribbon is 9mm wide. The variagated pink ribbon is River Silk's V No. 106 (the V stands for variagated). This ribbon is smaller, only 4 mm wide. I ended up using it and the solid medium pink River Silk S19 as well as a hand dyed 7mm ribbon called Petals in Rainbow Sherbet (pinks with a touch of peach) from Sweet Child of Mine.



Following Helen's instructions, I worked the flower in layers, back to front, stitching some petals on top of back petals with a sharp crewel needle and leaving room in the center for the pistils of the flower center. I had some frosted yellow long bugle beads from Blue Moon Beads that I added for the center as the last step in stitching this piece. One long thread of silk perle Grandeur #G848 in wrapped stem stitch added the stem. I decided I didn't have enough room to do a leaf. I think that I should have used wider ribbons than I had for the flower to make it look like a peony (it is more like a chrysanthemum) but this was an experiment. Scale is very important in stitching realistic pieces and my flower is really too small for the bee but this was a learning experience. And it certainly is charming.


Here is SharonG's bee finished, then framed in its little shadow box.


This tiny design was a very fast stitch as SRE and the Diagaonal Brick are fast to do. Most of my designs are larger and I break down how they were stitched into multiple blog entries, but since this was small I decided to experiment and just describe everything in one long essay. I hope you enjoyed watching this as much as I enjoyed stitching it!

Anyone who wants to pick up this canvas and try stitching a flower of their own? It's available here and many other shops, too.
http://www.needlenookoflajolla.com/designers/sharon/index.html

UPDATE: If you are at all hesitant about trying silk ribbon embroidery on your needlepoint, check out what Judy Harper is doing with one of her birthday crazy quilt pattern hearts. Isn't that pretty/!
http://fairy-crafts.blogspot.com/2009/06/august-cq-sword-lily-in-silk-ribbon.html

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

New Threads from Ruth and Fabulous Stitching from Ruth

Ruth Dilts, enabler of the week here in Virginia, sent me a list of the new threads she saw at market from Rainbow Gallery. They, along with Kreinik, are one of the largest thread manufacturers here in the U.S. so many of us will see the following in the shops soon. Here are the colors and their names. The link is to the What's New part of the Rainbow Gallery website so you can look at photos. Just click on the hyperlinks to go to the sections that intrique you.
http://www.rainbowgallery.com/whatsnew.cfm

Silk Lame 13 CT.
LB04 antique Rose
LB 05 Avocado
LB 13 Sky Blue
LB26 Raspberry
LB28 Burgundy
LB30 Orange
LB 31 Copper
LB50 Fuchsia
LB57 Christmas Green
LB58 Dk Christmas Green
LB659 Liliac
LB60 Camel
LB62 Dark Sand Gold

Silk Lame 18 CT.
SL 57 Christmas Green
SL 58 Dark Christmas Green
SL 59 Liliac
Sl 60 Camel
SL 61 Sand Gold
SL62 Dark Sand Gold
SL 63 Emerald
Sl64 Deep Avocado

Fyre Werks Soft Sheen
FT 57 Meriot
FT 58 Gold
FT59 Tawny Gold
FT 60 Melon
FT 61 Wisteria
FT 62 Granite

Neon Rays Plus
NP 133 Iris
Neon Rays
N 131 Pale Iris
N132 Lite Iris
N133 Iris

Treasure Braid Petite
PB73 Black Hill Gold
PH08 Royal Blue
PH09 Purple
PH11 Pink
PH12 Dark Turquoise
PH13 Copper

Very Velvet and Petite Very Velvet Same colors
Powder Blue
Medium Violet
Cream
Lite Pearl Gray
Pearl Gray

Water & Ice
WT 12 Pearl Ice [note that Ruth says this one was a big hit at Market]
WT 13 Aqua
WT 14 Ocean
WT 15 Rain Gray
WT 17 Barely Rose

Petite Frosty Rays
PY410 Lite Periwinkle
PYT411 Dark Periwinkle
Crystal Braid
CR 17 Aquamarine
CR18 Brite Red

Ruth Schmuff, another enabler of the highest order, is tempting me with photos of two designs from the Columbus trade show. The first design isn't finished. It's from her line of canvases and a stitch guide is promised so you can stitch your own carrot walking her brocoli dogs. Really. You have to see this to believe it!

The second photo is from Leigh Designs and is my favorite of the new large Guadalajara canvases. I just love that pink flower....

Both pieces were stitched by master embroiders and are works of art. Enjoy!
http://www.tistheseason.org/blog/2009/06/were-home.html

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

What I saw at Market, by the Booth Bimbo

This morning I have a report straight from the TNNA show from Joanne C., who graciously agreed to tell us what she saw there as a guest blogger. Now, here's Joanne--

********************************************
In the interest of full disclosure, I had always, always, always (you get the picture) wanted to go to Market. Or for at least 20 years when the summer market used to be in Chicago, where I live, and the shop owners always said, we’ll take you, and I never got to go. So when my very good friend Elizabeth bought “Needlepoint Now” six months ago and asked if I’d help her staff her booth during her first-ever Market, I spent about 10 seconds thinking about it and then said, “are you KIDDING? I’d love to go!” The only bad part was that the Booth Queen called me the Booth Bimbo, even though I referred to myself as the Booth Minion J.

I can’t judge how much space this trade show takes up, but it’s a lot. Hundreds of thousands of square feet – the aisles started their numbering at 100 and ended at 1700. I’m not going to say much about the knitting people except they have better sweaters than we do. Knitting is very much an international industry and there were vendors there from Britain, Australia, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, the US, Canada, Japan, etc, ranging from vendors with 15 booths to those who are more “cottage industry” with one. I really didn’t go over to the knitting side because I was afraid I’d be sucked in again and my hand surgeon would refuse me another cortisone injection to fix an acute tendonitis attack caused by knitting.

Besides, I was too busy looking at needlepoint, cause it was all over. I had more than enough time to walk around when I wasn’t in the booth, but I kept gravitating back to the same few booths. Melissa Shirley is my favorite painted canvas designer and I couldn’t stop going to look at the beautiful things she had displayed. I’m sorry that I didn’t get to meet her and act all “fan girlish” but she wasn’t there due to a family commitment. Her work was unbelievable and it was a privilege to see it all in one place to see her range. A lot of her new things are on her website, including some great new flower purses (the 1306 series) that could also be pillows, and a big gorgeous black crane (number 1288) that was partially stitched, and a HUGE Santa that must have been 4 feet tall, he had a really cute face. The ladies in the Melissa Shirley booth were wonderful to talk with and I’m sure I drove them nuts with my “visits.”
http://www.melissashirleydesigns.com//gallery/?bsn=1

Jane had asked me to look at three particular designers – Leigh, Mindy, and SharonG. I am not a huge fan of Asian pieces so I didn’t really know what to look for, but there were some gorgeous, gorgeous geishas, showgirls, great pumpkins, and my favorites, the Guadalajara flowers. These were big, abstract, boldly colored flowers on contrasting brightly colored canvases.
http://www.leighdesigns.com/ImgIdx01.html

The beautiful things on Sharon G’s website looked even more beautiful in person – the “horses behinds” she’s got in Christmas, abstract, and floral themes are adorable, I’m looking forward to seeing these stitched. She’s also got some new florals with abstract flowers and striped backgrounds that taper down from being three threads wide, then two, then one, then scattered, just dying to have a big fancy embellished flower.
http://sharongneedlepointdesigner.blogspot.com/2009/06/ct35-is-newer-canvas-that-now-has.html

I loved Mindy’s canvases. My friend Elizabeth lives in Eugene, Oregon, so I’ve been in Mindy’s shop several times and seen a lot of her work, but she had a lot that I hadn’t seen since my last trip there in April, including her signature beautifully painted canvases designed to go in Stirling bags. She showed a lot of canvases with mixed media trims – resin buttons with contrasting faces, wooden buttons, lace trims, ribbon trims, funky spherical balls on funkier stockings, buttons as tree toppers on great Halloween and Christmas trees, and a great collection of Halloween canvases that I don’t remember seeing before – she’s painted a lot of plaid and it was fabulous. Oh, and the purses! Mindy’s done great purses for years but she had some new shapes. I think I have to have the round one….
http://www.mindysneedlepoint.com/new_default.htm

[Jane adds, "Here is the Stirling leather goods website. If you click on Designer Links you'll see two Mindy abstracts that fit the purses."]
http://www.stirlingcases.com/products.php

The trend I picked up on was PINK – everyone had something pink. Lani had some gorgeous, gorgeous pink canvases – abstract patterns with sea shells in the center dying for light stitches, Ruth Schmuff had great pink ornaments, there was a beautiful pink stitched and beaded Melissa Shirley purse in her booth, Mindy had pink, Julia had pink, you get the picture. I love pink, so maybe I was just attuned to it. Purses were also really popular, everyone is showing purses.

[Here is Lani's pink rose pillow and a new Melissa Shirley animal canvas--a chameleon. The second link below is the pink purse Joanne loved.]
http://www.tistheseason.org/blog/2009/06/columbus-market-day-1.html

http://www.melissashirleydesigns.com/galcol/index.cgi?index=1245457247_13532&col=4

[Ruth Schmuff's pink ornaments are here, about the middle of the page.]
http://www.bedeckedandbeadazzled.com/whatsNew.php

[Lani's model page shows off glorious stitched examples of her work.]
http://www.lanienterprises.com/finished_models_imgs.html

This experience made me realize how hard our shop owners work for us – they spend money on travel, lodging, food, and registration to walk around for three days, looking at everything, talking to designers, taking notes, deciding how to best spend their allocated funds on things they think will please us. They have to buy for a whole range of customers whose tastes range from the funkiest new painted canvas to little Christmas ornaments to canvases with pre-stitched centers and canvases that zip into eye glass cases. In talking to them, I realized they can’t just buy what they like, cause if you don’t have what your customers want, they’ll go elsewhere.

I met or was reintroduced to a bunch of fascinating people, all of whom loved to talk about needlepoint as much as I do. Including Amy Bunger and Robin and Jill from her shop, and Kelly Clark (who is just as nice as you’d think she is – she remembered my name when I went back to talk to her the day after I met her, and this was after she must have met 15 million people, and her work was spectacular – the new barnyard animals were adorable!! ), and Anne who is the genius behind Gloriana (who invited us for a road trip!), and Liz from DMC who came over to show us the new “Memory Thread”, very cool, and Ada, who is the designer behind Eye Candy (distributed by Ruth Schmuff), Ada uses color soooo well, and Cathe Ray who owns Needle in a Haystack, and Wendy Harwood who owns Aristeia in California, and Cynthia Thomas from Houston who does extraordinary stitch guides and had the best job at Market cause she got to go from booth to booth, talking to designers about doing stitch guides for them.

[Here are the Kelly Clark barnyard animal canvases along with her other new pieces.]
http://www.kellyclarkneedlepoint.com/new

[Here is the DMC Memory Thread.]
http://www.dmc.com/majic/pageServer/0t010001kd/en_GB/Desire.html

I also got to take off my “Needlepoint Now” hat and put on my “Seminar Faculty Committee for ANG” hat – I talked to a lot of people about plans for Columbus in 2010 and San Antonio in 2011. All in all, I had a great weekend, and if you ever get the chance to go to Market, all I can say is, GO! Thanks for inviting me, Elizabeth – I’m ready to be the Booth Minion again anytime!

********************************************
Thanks, Joanne. You are the ideal booth babe reporter and we do appreciate hearing all about the newest needlepoint items that will tempt us in the months to come.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Byzantine Icon Ornaments Are Done

Here are the Byzantine icon ornaments, all done!

The Blue Angel has a single line of the beads I also used on her halo all around the edge to hide the join.

The Red Madonna's corners--I used the same red beads as on the halos--gave me fits. The painted 13 count canvas was really stiff and the corners didn't quite meet the felt backing in the way I wanted. No problem, add a second line of beads just at the corners.

Beads hide a multitude of sins....

I'm sorry you can't see the gold lame, gold paint, metallics and beads shining on these two pieces. They are little gems in person but don't photograph well.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow