Trim and Other New Things

I updated the Stitch Guides blog with a brief article on Orna Willis, who is just starting to design painted canvases with a stitch guide, and with a description of Pegge Hopper's Hawaiian women series, some of which come with stitch guides.  (One of Pegge's pieces for Needlepoint Etc. in Honolulu is the Canvas of the Day today.)  You can visit Stitch Guides by clicking on the tab above, by clicking on the Magic Carpet photo near the blog list on this page, or by going here.
http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com/

Mary Corbet's blog mentioned a brand new product yesterday, a corded metallic trim called Soft Metallic Twist.  She has great close up photos of the colors available.
http://www.needlenthread.com/2010/06/soft-metallic-twist-trim.html/comment-page-1#comment-37988

Because Mary doesn't say how much trim is in a package and I can't see the manufacturer name in her photo, I did a little Googling and found that Alex Parras Needle Arts sells this stuff.  It comes in two diameters and there is a meter in each package, i.e., roughly a yard.
http://store.apneedlearts.com/mesotwco1me.html

You can buy it in larger quantities here from this Canadian site.  At least I think this is the same thing.  I know nothing about the Canadian shop,  but Alex Parras Needle Arts is the Internet presence of Thistle Needleworks in Connecticut.  I highly recommend their shop's selection of goods and their customer service.
http://www.pandgenterprises.com/metal%20threads.htm

Finally, let's go visit Nimble Needle's blog and see how a customer, faced with a gift canvas with elements she didn't particularly care for, customized it to suit her own tastes.  I think it turned out great! If you are in the same boat, why not try similar techniques yourself?
http://thenimbleneedle.blogspot.com/2010/06/curls-and-then-some.html

Jane, standing on the edge of the swimming pool and screaming, "Jump, jump, jump!" to the stitchers standing on the edge wondering if there are sharks.  No NP police, no sharks, I promise.

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

The Peach and the Plum

The Peach and The Plum

Once Cha's fruit stems were finished, I started work on the peach and plum.  These are beautifully painted and I wanted light coverage stitches to show off the shading.  I also wanted to use more round or oval stitches.  After all, both fruit are rounded and using similar stitches to the ones on the leaves and flower petals will help unify the various areas of this design.

I decided on Small Balloon Stitch, which I found in Brenda Hart's Favorite Stitches (page 11).  Here is what it looks like.

Brenda Hart's Small Balloon Stitch

This stitch is small in scale, perfect for the peach and plum which are much smaller than the parrot.  I started with the left side of the peach and worked it to the right, switching colors from hot pink to pink to peach and goldenrod.  There is a white highlight painted on the peach which I stitched with a thin pink metallic.  I only used one ply of my threads, so that most of the shading shows.

Then I switched to the plum and worked it left to right in the same way, except I used one ply of three shades of purple.  In this case the highlight is a light purple color.  Did you notice the one blue stitch at the bottom of one Small Balloon Stitch in the stitched sample above?  Brenda Hart recommends putting a metallic stitch at the top and bottom of the long pairs of stitches in the center of one complete Small Balloon Stitch.  I added these two horizontal stitches using purple Accentuate just in the highlight area.  The rest of the plum doesn't have metallic accents.

I doubt you can see the metallic pinks and purples in the peach and plum but in person they add a lot to this piece.

Next time I'll talk about the cluster of wild grapes.  By the way, I finished another leaf and a half last night, which means I have five leaves to go.  I also stitched a leaf vein, to see if the thread and stitch I'd chosen work.  But more about that once I finish explaining the fruit cluster.

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

A Quiet Oasis

Cha-Cha's Tree Branch

Every embellished painted canvas needs a quiet oasis of calm to rest the eyes.  That's the established wisdom, which recommends having areas of tent stitch on each canvas.  You know me--I think the rules are meant to be broken--but there is sense in this, particularly for a piece with a great deal going on.

I'm trying to calm down the canvas by using related round or oval stitches on the flowers and leaves but when I first started to think about the cluster of fruit and the tree branch they rest on, I decided that it might be smart to stitch the branch itself all in tent stitches.

So that's what I did, except that I skipped the little clinging vine that twists around the branch.  Those areas I did not stitch.  Once I finished stitching (three shades of brown, Mandarin Floss for the dark and medium browns and DMC cotton floss for the lightest tan) the branch, I couched Kreinik braid around the branch as the vine.

Then with my leftover tail of Kreinik and some of the leftover darkest brown, I also stitched the peach stem.  The Kreinik make padding in a sort of backwards 7 shape, which I covered in smooth stitches using the brown floss.  If you enlarge the photo you probably can see the backwards 7.  In this photo I haven't covered the metallic padding with brown floss yet.

Then I stitched the plum's stem in tent stitches with some leftover black floss.

Once the branch and the fruit stems were finished, I'd laid the foundation for the more embellished grapes,  plum and peach.  More on that next time.

I stitched the two smallest leaves last night and finished half of another of the large leaves.  Six more leaves to go!

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

Let's Talk Green

After totally confusing Blog's readers with my flight of fancy yesterday into design topics, my feet are back on the ground today.  I want to talk about a topic we've all faced, choosing colors for a design.  When I first started work on Cha, I pulled threads from my collection that seemed to match the colors for each section, then put back the ones I knew wouldn't work.  The photo above shows the greens I was left with after I put the green metallics and heavier weight threads away since the greens are on the leaves in the design and I wanted light coverage there to de-emphasize the leaves.

As you can see in the photo of the entire design, there are lots of shades of green in the leaves, ranging from the acid green to two shades of medium green and a dark green.  The leaves also all have a brown vein in the middle but I'm not going to discuss that here.  That's four greens to choose, right?  Now look at this photograph of the first large leaf I've stitched.  Can you tell how many colors I used here?

The answer is two--I used the Needle Necessities acid green overdye on the yellow-green areas and the darker medium green Splendor that is immediately to the right of the skein of NN.

The acid green card of Splendor would have worked but I liked how the mix of colors in the Needle Necessities overdye looked with the leaf, so I went with shades of green instead of just one green.

I plan to use just three shades of green on this piece instead of matching the five shades of how it is painted.  With light coverage stitches, the background mixes with the thread to influence what the eye sees.  This may not work well, so I'm not putting the excess green threads away just yet, but I think if I just use the lighter of the two dark greens (also to the right of the skein of NN), I will have enough color to stitch all the leaves.

The next challenge is to decide how to handle the brown vein.  Do I continue my stitches on top of the brown vein?  Do I then put thread on top of that or just stitch the veins later?  How does it look to change colors in the middle of the stitch sequence?  Will the stitches flow better if each stitch is done completely in one color instead of breaking it up to match the paint underneath as I did above?

I'll think about all these things today in the sunlight.  We lost power twice again last night so although I did get some stitching done, I didn't have enough good lighting to look at what I did and see how it looks.  For now I think that any stitch that is interrupted by a vein looks ok but I don't like splitting a stitch between two colors.  I may be pulling that out after I look at the canvas from a distance.  What bothers you from a foot away as you stitch may not matter from 3-5 feet away, which is generally the distance from which finished pieces are viewed.

See what I mean?

So how did I pick those three colors out of all the possibilities?  What I do is just lay a strand of each across the leaf and see how well they harmonize with the colors painted on.  Strangely enough, when you are picking colors for a light coverage area, the thread that is an exact match to the paint doesn't ever look quite as good to me as one that is slightly lighter or darker.  Somehow the interaction between paint and thread that isn't quite a perfect match adds to the design.

Tomorrow I'll start talking about the fruit clustered below the parrot.  I've finished those areas and will describe what I did and why while I stitch more leaves and background.

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

Hot Times and Hot Topics

Cha-Cha's cluster of fruit

It is HOT here in CH.   We lost power twice yesterday, leaving us panting in the 95 degree heat (with a heat index over 100).  I didn't stitch much, but I did think quite a bit about the cluster of fruit on Cha.  I'm going to do things a bit backwards from what I usually do and show you the photo of an area I've finished, then later explain how each segment was stitched.  What you see above is the cluster of fruit near the center of the canvas.

The plum and peach are stitched with light coverage stitches.  The wild grapes are entirely beaded.  The seed pod is done with full coverage stitches, as are the fruit stems and the tree branch that the fruit rests on.

Using so many beads to completely cover a section of my canvas is equivalent to putting a big hairy tarantula on top of a cupcake--you can't help noticing it.  In fact, it dominates everything else!  What does that do to the balance of the design?  Does the grape cluster look ok with the light coverage stitches on the fruit?  Do the solid stitches on the seed pod and the tree branch look odd paired with the grapes and the fruit?  What will I have to do to the bird to make it an area that will be noticed, not ignored because those sparkly grapes are present?

Stitching painted canvases from scratch is an exercise in taste and style.  You not only have to come up with stitches and choose threads, you have to balance everything you do so that it makes up a harmonious whole.  I don't think there are rules for this.  You can't tell people if you always do X, things will always look great.  Painted canvases are too varied and everyone's taste differs.  I know plenty of people who never do anything but tent stitches, for example.  And there are people who only do canvases they can embellish the heck out of with the newest, glitziest threads, and dozens of stitches.  Your own individual style determines what type of stitching you are drawn to.

What this means is that there are only general guidelines for stitching painted canvases, which is why so many folks buy stitch guides, why so many avoid painted canvases, and why so many fall in love with a design only to leave it languishing in their stash because they don't have the nerve to start it.

For me, stitching painted canvases is equivalent to mountain climbing, sailing around the world solo, or racing cigarette boats, etc.  That is why Blog is called The Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure.  I'm always exploring what I can do with needle and thread and how I can work with a designer's vision to create something unique that enhances the original design.

You already know that I'm playing with ways to emphasize or de-emphasize areas on Cha.  After all, I used a larger version of the same stitch to make one flower advance visually while the other recedes.  I am using more plies on the flowers and fewer on the leaves for the same reason.  Now we are moving into another area, the focal point of the canvas, where I added beads to make the wild grapes the main part of the canvas.  I have several ideas about how to give the bird's upper body equal weight to the grapes but I'll talk about those later.  Right now I'd just like to point out what is happening with this canvas so you can understand what I am trying to accomplish.

The design reminds me of expensive French wallpaper with a half realistic and half stylized parrot about to land on the branch of a flowering tree to feast on fruits.  The flowers remind me of magnolias but they have poppy centers, which is typical of the elements of the design.  Half is realistic and half isn't.  This gave me the idea of trying to make this design one that is becoming real. I hope to give Cha-Cha the feel of a fabric that is coming to life.  I want the focal point of the canvas solid, while the margins are less so. The flowers are part of a drawing but the bird in the center is coming to life.  We'll have to wait until I finish to see if I pull this off.

I want to repeat a link I posted yesterday to Gay Ann Rogers' website.  This is one of her technique postings. In it she talks about thread weight and how important it is.  I'm using thread weight on this canvas as well as stitches to making it match my vision.  I hope this gives you things to think about that will help you with your canvases and give you ideas about how to proceed without worrying whether you will fail.
http://www.gayannrogers.com/site_2/Techniques_10.html

Besides, I probably am going to need advice and your critical eyes as I stitch Cha in my latest needlepoint adventure.

Today's going to be as hot and I expect we'll have more brownouts. (I'm doing my part to minimize electricity use by not running the washer or dryer or vacuum cleaner.  LOL)  I do hope to stitch more background and do more leaf stitches before it gets so hot that handling needle and thread with sweaty hands doesn't appeal to me.

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