Surfin' Santa All Stitched

Joan Thomasson's Surfin Santa is all stitched, glued to his felt backing and ready to be made up.  You can see the finished lei I talked about yesterday in the photo of the completed ornament.  The small angel and small Santa kits that Joan sells are really fast stitches.  I know this was a holiday week and I had more stitching time but still, he came to life in just over a week.

The kits come with felt backing, a long length of gold metallic thread to use as trim and to make a loop to hang this ornament, and finishing instructions.  It is really easy to do.

Step one: Put your long hair up.  This is essential unless you like glue in your hair.

Step two:  Cover your work surface with waxed paper.  This is essential unless you like glue on your dining room table.

Step three:  Lay your felt good side down on the waxed paper and lay Surfin Santa, also good side down, on the paper next to the felt.

Step four:  Put glue (I used Aileen's Tacky Fabric Glue which dries clear) all around the edge of the ornament's back side.  You won't be able to get too close to the edge but that's ok.

Step five:  Smear the glue line to the very edge and beyond a bit to the unstitched canvas with your finger.  Note that I did not put glue on either hand as I plan to attach a loop of metallic to each hand to hang Surfin Santa.  I'll have to sew the loop inside the needlepoint and felt and then add more glue with a toothpick to seal the hands tight.  Then he will have to dry overnight again before I dare hang him anywhere.

Step six:  CAREFULLY flip Surfin Santa over and lay him right on the felt's back side and mash hard.  You have not trimmed the canvas at all, mind, but since Joan includes a piece of felt the size of the entire canvas, you can easily center Santa on the backing fabric.

Step seven:  Wash your hands to get the wet glue off your fingers.  Dry your hands and mash down on Santa again.  Put waxed paper on top of him and weigh him down with a heavy book or something similar for at least 3-4 hours to dry.  I left him overnight to dry myself.

Step eight:  Cut out the glued ornament right to the edge of the stitching.  Don't use your good scissors because cutting through NP canvas glued to felt will dull your good embroidery scissors right quick.

Step nine:  Trim any little bits of bare canvas or not totally cut felt with your good scissors.  I am going to do this today after having left Surfin Santa to sit overnight.  The photo above shows him cut off but not carefully trimmed yet.  Note that I did not cut out around his hands as there is no glue there.  That will wait until I attach the two ends of the hanging loop.

Step ten:  Attached the gold metallic cord all around the edge.  Joan says to glue it but I prefer to hand stitch the cord on.  I'll be working on this today.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Santa's Lei

I'm reposting yesterday's photo of Santa on his surfboard because I'd started on the lei in this photograph.  (Sorry, Google is randomly deleting photos and many of them I cannot replace.). See how I have done 5 "spokes" on the painted flowers?  That's how I start on each flower. I used three colors of ribbon floss for the flowers.  This thread is ribbon-like and does twist so I used a laying tool to keep the "petal" stitches flat when I did the first 5 or so stitches.  They are spaced out so that I can see exactly the margins of the flowers.  I'm doing these stitches like an eyelet stitch, coming up at the outside edge of each flower and then going down into the same center hole for each stitch.  Ribbon floss is thin, so the center hole isn't enlarged much but if I was using another thread, I might have to poke the tip of my scissor blade into the center to make room for all the threads before starting to stitch a flower.

The next step is to fill in the flowers by adding more petals.  This time I didn't always use the laying tool as a twisted stitch adds dimension.  You can see that one flower was made using both orange and yellow stitches.  I only wanted one multi-colored flower and I stuck it in the back side so that it wasn't prominent.  I tried to space out my three colors of flowers so that I did not have too much of one color in an area.  The flowers are the focal point of this design and brighten it up since I muted the Hawaiian shirt colors and Santa's got a white beard and rides a brown surfboard. Even the waves and water don't add a great deal of color as green is a neutral.  So I needed LOUD flowers.

This is an earlier photo of the lei but it shows the French knots I put in the centers well.  I also did two bullions, but they are harder to do with ribbon floss and also a bit too much to be in every single flower in my opinion.

By the way, I forgot yesterday to add that I'd put a sleeve cuff on Santa's Hawaiian shirt.  It's just a long stitch wrapped over and over again in the same purple DMC floss that I used in the shirt.

Tomorrow you'll see a finished photo of this ornament including the lei and after that I'll talk about how Joan Thomasson says to finish it.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Surfboard and Surf

Surfin' Santa is a small piece, maybe 6 inches high and 5 wide at the base.  So he doesn't take long to stitch.  Above you see he has faded cut off jeans (split stitch in Needle Necessities' Madras), a stitched surfboard (Byzantine stitch using three plies of the two shades of brown DMC floss from the Surfin Santa kit),  green water (random long diagonal stitches using the two shades of teal green DMC floss and the blue green metallic from the kit) and white French knot foam (in the white DMC floss from the kit plus some shading using the white-touched-with green and silver Kreinik metallic).  I also have stitched his hair and beard using the white Medici from the kit supplemented with some light gray Medici from my stash.

I've also given him a bracelet using a length of chocolate milk colored Kreinik #16 braid and have started on his lei.  I'll talk about the lei tomorrow but it is basically eyelet stitches done in ribbon floss.

He's coming along nicely!

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, needlepointers!  I hope 2010 is great for all of us.  To celebrate, I have a photo of my mother showing off her needlepoint ornaments including the new Gay Ann Rogers cameo ornament I stitched for her last November.  Mom didn't bother with a tree this year (she says folks who are 87 are exempt from decorating everything except the toilet handle at Christmas) but she did get out the ornaments I've made her over the years and also displayed the lovely Renaissance Designs Christmas door Mimi and I stitched several years back.  She appreciates all the work and detail in handmade needlework.  I hope you are as lucky in your friends and relatives as I am.

In the photo above you see the Melissa Shirley wisteria teapot ornament and the little Maggie cat in a hat mini stocking which she adores and grabbed from my niece to use.  Mom claims it is a portrait of HER cat so she gets it.  LOL

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions but this year I did decide to not stitch so many Asian-themed designs.  I like them a lot but there are many things in my stash that are not oriental that need my attention.  Other than that, I didn't resolve anything.  Except maybe to keep accumulating stash credits by using threads from my stash....  Anyone taking bets as to when my stash credits will hit 100?

However, Althea DeBrul is making up for my lack of interest in resolutions by deciding to do a huge bargello sampler with a stitch a day for the next year in honor of her father.  You can read about the project here.  I plan to follow along to learn more about bargello and see some amazing and beautiful patterns.
http://bargelloneedlepoint.com/365-days-of-bargello-needlepoint/comment-page-1/#comment-194

Again, Happy New Year to all from Chilly Hollow!

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Santa's Sunglasses

Joan Thomasson's Hawaiian Santa needed sunglasses and I wanted him to have heavy black framed ones like the ones my youngest brother wears since this is for him.

The first thing I did was to tent stitch the glass part of the sunglasses with navy blue Water N Ice, using the kit's enclosed light blue/green metallic for the highlights where the sun hits the sunglasses.  Then I pulled out my black DMC memory thread and cut off a 4-5 inch length.

DMC memory thread is actually thin copper wire wrapped with DMC thread.  You can read more about it here at the DMC website.
http://www.dmc.com/majic/pageServer/0k010101l7/en_GB/Desire-memory-thread.html

This was my first time actually using the thread that DMC kindly sent me to try out.  It is a lot more flexible than I expected it to be, so it was very easy for me to twist it into a rough figure 8 shape, then bent it a bit with the eraser end of a pencil to the exact shape I needed.

As you can see from the long end on the left, the cut end does unravel a bit, so I was careful to cut plenty of this stuff.  I ended up cutting off the short end under the earpiece knot I made and keeping it from unraveling with a dot of my fabric glue.  After that dried, I had to enlarge the hole in the canvas for the long end to go in, but it was easy to couch down the glasses on the front with black DMC cotton floss and easy to tied down the long end on the back with the same thread. After that, I trimmed down the long loose end a bit on the back side and Santa has his sunglasses.

DMC memory thread is certainly something I'll use again.  I have a SharonG bra and tap pants set in my stash I plan to work soon and memory thread (perhaps in silver?) will make a great coat hanger.
http://www.sharong.com/catalog/bras/index.html

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow