Hari-Kuyo Honors Our Needles UPDATED

My Old Needles

Today's February 8 here in Chilly Hollow so my old tarnished needles are now wrapped in pretty paper and tied with a raffia bow, ready to be ceremoniously placed in the garbage can.  The Festival of Needles is described in yesterday's and today's postings from the Japanese Embroidery blog.  That's not how I am celebrating but I am not Japanese and I need to modify their Shinto tradition of honoring old tools in my own way since sticking them into a block of tofu and tossing the tofu into the Shenandoah River doesn't sound like a great idea to me.
http://japanese-embroidery.blogspot.com/2011/02/harikuyo-festival-of-broken-needles.html

Stitching Fingers is celebrating by taking photographs of their pins and needles.  However you celebrate your needles, keep in mind that without their humble service, we could not do any form of stitching.
http://stitchinfingers.ning.com/photo/albums/festival-of-needles

UDPATE:  Carol-Ann's moving tribute to her needles has to be included here today.
http://threadsacrosstheweb.blogspot.com/2011/02/festival-of-needles.html

Susan has a wonderful project to honor her needles.
http://plays-with-needles.blogspot.com/2011/02/festival-of-needles.html

http://plays-with-needles.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-book-of-needles.html

Other folks are participating in their own way, which makes me happy.
http://acoloradostitcher.blogspot.com/2011/02/festival-of-broken-needles.html

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Embellishing Lillian Chermor’s Gold Fish

Lillian Chermor's Gold Fish

Carol and Jane continue their conversation about Carol's Lillian Chermor Gold Fish canvas:

Morning, Carol. I wanted you to know if you haven't noticed already that Blog commentators are sending you background ideas. One recommended David McCaskill's water stitch which is diagrammed on the ANG website. It's an open stitch and very pretty. It might give you the glimpse of brown you wanted. I found it easier to do if I printed out the directions, then turned them sideways (the canvas, too) and worked it as vertical lines instead of horizontal rows. I used both 2 plies of blue silk and two of a thin blue metallic when I used this behind a fish. It was gorgeous! I did the first row in silk and the second in metallic and repeated alternating these rows the whole background.
http://www.needlepoint.org/StitchOfTheMonth/2003/mar.php 

The second commentator suggested using a open stitch and then mounting the piece over a mirror to give subtle movement to the background. This will only work if you frame your fish but it is a great idea. If you wanted to do this on a pillow, gold lame fabric will add a gleam but not the movement you get from glimpses of a mirror. You can also buy sheets of thin metallic in scrapbooking supplies that are sort of like thick aluminum foil. It can be cut with scissors. I used a bit of this stuff for two "mirrors" on a piece I stitched for the ANG auction years ago.

Carol wrote: 
I found some beads on Etsy.com that I think will be perfect for the teardrop seaweed. Now I need to find some bright green and purple netting or organza for the beads and mirrors. 

Check netting and tulle as well in your fabric shop. My local shop (Joann’s Fabrics) has them displayed together and they are very similar except tulle holes seem smaller than netting holes. Netting is also more expensive, I have no idea why.

Carol:
I found some threads in my stash that might work for the water; I'll have to check them in the daylight tomorrow. I found several that would work, in a variety of fibers (silk, rayon, silk/wool blends) in colors in the blue to blue-green range. I think I like the ones on the blue-green end of that spectrum best. 

I think blue-greens would look fabulous with the reds, oranges and yellows of your fish. That also is what the Caribbean waters look like. They aren’t blue but a turquoise/green mix.

Carol continues about the threads she found in her stash:
They have a variety of finishes; most have a matte finish, some have just a little bit of shine to them, and some have a lot of shine (the Cire thread from EdMar has a fantastic shiny finish; it might be a bit much all by itself, but perhaps it could be blended with something else). 

The water stitch (above) can be done in two types of thread. Just do one row in one and the next in the other and repeat the rows, alternating the threads. The long wavy stitches we talked about can also be done this way. You can skip a row between the long ribbons of the stitch and fill it in with tent stitches in the second color or you can make the rows touch and alternate threads in each row. It all depends on just how much color you want to show. This means some test stitching on your part to choose the look that best meets the image you have in your mind for this canvas.

Carol continues:
I've been thinking about some of the stuff we've previously discussed.  I really like that verticle wavy stitch that you sent; I think that might be the one I ultimately choose. I don't have a lot of needlepoint stitch books to check other stitches. I think it would look good to make it about the same size as the twisted seaweed. Because it has that small tent stitch area between the wider parts, I could use one of the more matte threads in the wide part and introduce a really shiny one in the skinny part. 

I agree. I’ll start putting together references of various stitch books with ribbon-like stitches that resemble the wavy seaweed on your canvas.

Carol:
While I still like the idea of the school of fish in the darning pattern, I don't know that I have enough space in the background to do that. And as you said in a previous email, it probably wouldn't work very well with the wavy stitch. I think that idea might have to wait for another canvas. Fortunately, I have another tropical fish canvas in my stash for which it might be perfect! 

I’m with you on this point. I think your 9x9 piece is too small to work in a darning stitch school of fish.  Still, this is a good idea and if it is perfect for another canvas, then you can use it there.

Carol:
About the Ultrasuede. After thinking about it, I'm pretty sure that if I decide to use the Ultrasuede, I don't want to use it on the fish itself. Maybe on the twisty seaweed, but only if I can't find some ribbon that would work there. I really want the seaweed to be a detached element, and I can't figure out in my head how to do that with the Ultrasuede without it losing that flowy feel that seaweed in water has. If you have any ideas about how to make that work, I'd love to hear them. 

I can’t think of any way to use Ultrasuede as a long length of twisted fabric except to cut lengths that are the size and length of silk ribbon. Personally if I were doing that sort of seaweed, I would stick to silk ribbon. It’s easier to work with. Here’s the River Silks website color card. 

http://www.riversilks.com/colors1-100.html 

Click to work your way through the pages. They have overdyed ribbons but they seem to be in shades of one color, not a mix of blue and green like your two strands of smooth seaweed. See anything that looks good to you? Of course you could make one strand green and the other blue. You will need to measure the width you want before you order ribbons. I suggested the River Silks ribbons because they come in various widths (4mm, 7mm and 13mm) and they have overdyed colors. I use 4mm ribbons on 18 count but I’m not making fake seaweed! Because you’ll stitch right over the painted smooth seaweed ribbons, you can use any width you like (you can twist the ribbon more or less to make it narrower or wider) but you’ll want something that looks good with the fish and the teardrop seaweed. This means you’ll need to experiment. You can cut lengths of paper and dangle them in front of your canvas if you don’t have a variety of ribbon widths in your stash. 

Remember to make a color copy of your canvas before you start stitching.  You can use it to position the ribbon seaweed after you stitch over the painted areas.

Carol ends:
I think that covers all the additional thoughts I've had on what we discussed. I haven't given much thought yet to the hot fix crystals; I think I have plenty of time before I need to make a decision on those. 

Since the hot fix crystals go on at the end, you have plenty of time before you have to get those, assuming you use them.  Right now you are assembling your supplies of embellishments and choosing a background thread or threads. I’m going to look up long ribbon looking stitches for you and send you references. If you don’t have any of those books, I’ll stitch samples for you to see and then stitch a diagram for the one you like best. Once we have some test samples stitched of the background, then we can start tackling stitches for the fish. I’d rather know what background you want first, however.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

The Festival of Broken Needles is Tomorrow

Japan's Festival of Broken Needles (or Festival of Needles, I've heard Hari-Kuyo translated both ways) is tomorrow, February 8.  I save up my tarnished needles all year for this.
http://stitchinfingers.ning.com/forum/topics/festival-of-needles

I'm not Japanese nor am I near a Japanese temple where needles are inserted into tofu and then floated away in a river, so tomorrow I will carefully package up my used needles in the prettiest box I have before I ceremoniously put them in the trash.  I like the idea of honoring the little needles without which I could not needlepoint.

If you are curious about the tradition, read what Susan has to say, then click on the link to the booklet that explains the traditions around this ceremonial Shinto tradition.
http://plays-with-needles.blogspot.com/2011/02/preparing-for-hari-kuyo.html

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Old Websites with New Faces

Holly Berry Snowman from Just Libby

Yesterday's canvas of the day was a particularly fun one--a Just Libby snowman!  Libby Sturdy does line drawn canvases that come with a stitch guide so that you fill in the areas of the outline with specified threads and stitches to create something wonderful. Libby's updated her website recently and reorganized things so you can find the various subjects she stitches easily.
http://www.justlibbydesigns.com/

Gay Ann Rogers is always changing her website to reflect the seasons and the designs she is promoting.  This month she plans to sell some of her old heart charts and is posting new photos of her hearts to her website daily.  She is asking folks to let her know which ones they'd like to see in the sale.  This allows her to build excitement for the sale yet not have to print out instructions for hearts that folks don't want to buy instructions for.  To see the show, go to the GAR website and then click on Hearts Gallery.  Each day new designs will be added.
http://www.gayannrogers.com/site_2/Home_Page.html

The moral is to keep checking your favorite websites.  Makeovers happen there all the time!

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Gold Fish Embellishment

Lillian Chermor Gold Fish

Carol and I've been talking about embellishing her Lillian Chermor canvas with all sorts of things.  Carol says, "Because I like to do dimensional work, I would like to incorporate some into this piece. I think the seaweed would be the place to bring that in; the fish fins (which would be my other option on this piece) are too big. I really like the picture I see in my mind of the fish actually being behind the seaweed strands, not just stitched to give it that appearance. I also wonder if shisa mirrors would work for the bubbles."

Carol, thanks for the quick response on this. Shisha mirrors should work for the bubbles if you can find them in the right sizes.


Have you thought about covering the mirrors with a thin see-through fabric like tulle, appliqueing the fabric to the canvas, then doing background on top of the fabric edges to hide them?  With a sharp needle you can easily stitch right though fabric.  You could choose different colors of fabric for the different colors of bubbles.  We can talk about this further but I'd try stem stitching around the mirror through the tulle with a ply of black floss and then basting the raw edges of the fabric to hold them in place.  The basting stitches may come out or maybe you'll just do background right on top of them.


If shisha mirrors don't work for whatever reason, think about buttons.  You might be able to find rhinestone buttons you could use the same way.  Sequins are another alternative.


Meanwhile, see what beads, sequins, and metallics you have, ok?  We are really going to go to town on this one!  Do you have a fabric store nearby with a good selection of fabrics?

"I have a fair selection of beads, but Minneapolis is blessed with some of the best bead stores in the country, so I can get what's not in my stash. As for fabrics, are you thinking fancy fabrics or quilting cottons? I can get either."

I thought you might use some bits of Ultrasuede on some of the seaweed but that's not certain yet. Depending on the background stitch and how you finish the Gold Fish you might put a piece of gold lame underneath it for a subtle shine. But we have a lot of talking to do before we decide on this.

I think the blue-green would be an excellent choice for the water. The split complementary on the color wheel of blue-green is orange and red so it should work well.

"I'll check my stash for some fab colors for the water.

I've done some work with shisha mirrors, and have several sizes in my stash. I actually thought about the netting thing as well--I think that would be a great look. Gathering up the tulle around the mirror would probably be faster than trying to tack down edges, but then of course you need a way to attach them to fabric--Invisible thread would work to tack them down; a blending filament would add some extra sparkle. I had one other thought about the background. I would like to explore the idea of letting a small amount of the canvas show through; the canvas color to me is the color of sand, which would fit well with the scene."

If you want to let sand colored background show, we can space out rows of stitches to allow either bare canvas between them or position tent stitches in the background color between rows.  Look at the stitches I sent and see if you like any of them and if we can modify the ones you like to allow this effect.

Think also about using brown beads as sand, perhaps scattered along the bottom of the canvas.  Or bead the school of fish we talked about.

"I was originally thinking about simply not having full coverage on the background stitching to let the brown show through, but skipping stitches might work as well. In my head, I like the more random look of the sparse coverage--skipping stitches might look too planned for me. I think I'm going for overall blue, with a hint of brown. I think the beads would not be random enough, and my brain would always want to know why the water has bumps in it. I'll check out the links to the background stitches once you send those."

Some background stitch suggestions have gone out to you already. Once you settle on a color and decide if you want to put a school of fish in the background, we can talk more about background stitches.


I was thinking about appliqueing Ultrasuede for your seaweed but that depends on the size of the seaweed.  It can be fiddly to stitch down very small pieces but if you are game, it'll look great.  I was also looking at the tear drop seaweed and thinking maybe using Flair or something similar stitched over beads to give dimension.  Look at this blog posting by PFOS.  The pumpkin is done this way.  You'll maybe need a teardrop bead to get the right effect, though.
http://pocketfullofstitches.blogspot.com/2011/02/spooky-stitches.html

"I LOVE the idea of the tear drops covered with the Flair. I was thinking of making a detached buttonhole net to cover something, but your idea is way easier and faster. It might make sense to insert the bead into the Flair and stitch up the excess so it covers the bead tightly. Finding these beads might be hard--I probably should not have thrown away that catalog I recently got from Fire Mountain Gems!"

Not to worry. They have a big website and when I searched on “teardrop” I got a lot of hits.
http://www.firemountaingems.com/

"As for the Ultrasuede, I'm not so sure about it. I really want the seaweed to be dimensional and I'm not envisioning how that would work with the Ultrasuede--although I guess I could applique to a slip and attach the slip to the canvas. I also wonder if Ultrasuede would be too stuff, and wouldn't have the flexibility that would create the seaweed in water effect. I was thinking something like a twisted silk ribbon would be the right weight, but I'm not sure what to do with it on the bottom edge."

Ultrasuede comes in two weights. If you use the light weight Ultrasuede meant for clothing instead of the upholstry weight, it isn’t stiff at all. I wasn’t thinking of using a long strip of it twisted like you might use ribbon. I was thinking of making xerox copies of your canvas, cutting out each squiggle in a different color of Ultrasuede, and stitching them down separately. You would have three blue shapes, two dark green ones and two light green ones. That’s what I meant about fiddly--there is a lot of cutting. The teardrop seaweed would be done a different way. Make sense? If you want to twist ribbon over the seaweed shapes, you can do that. First, stitch over the background and the fish entirely, then using a color copy of the unstitched canvas, come up with the ribbon at the top outside the margin and secure it. Then twist the free end of the ribbon and tack it down. When you get to the bottom of the seaweed, take the ribbon down into the canvas and secure it on the back. I’d use River Silks ribbon as it comes in various widths and a lot of colors. You could even mix colors and come up/go down each color separately although that is a lot of work and I’m not sure just how it would look.

How do you feel about doing the spots on the gold fish using the hot fix Swarkovski crystals?  Again, it depends on the size of the dots and you'll need two different sizes of crystals.  They do come in various sizes.  Do you think yellow or red or gold crystals are the right color for these?  I think using purple crystals on the coral red, and gold crystals on the red and yellow crystals on the purple would work but maybe that's too much color.    The fish is pretty busy.  Sequins might also work but I personally find it hard to get sequins in various sizes that look nice.  Most of them are just plastic or foil.

"I was wondering about what to do with the dots. I was thinking some sort of dimensional stitch, like a woven or a spider web rose, but I think the sparklies would be fun. I think it makes sense to use the complement of the background color for the sparklies. I have not worked with the hot fix crystals--do they just get attached with a hot glue gun, or is there something more to the process?"

You need a special hot fix tool for the crystals. It’s sort of like a hot glue gun but Swarkovski hot fix crystals come with the glue already on their flat back side. The hot fix tool is used to simultaneously pick up the crystal and heat the back so that when you press the tool holding the crystal down on your fabric (or canvas), it sticks. I’ve used the Jolee brand and it works nicely. Here’s a video that shows how it works. The tool and the crystal and glue get pretty hot, though. You have to be careful.  Here's a video that explains the process pretty well. This looks like a Jolee brand hot fix tool but they all work pretty much the same.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6bVc-gal9s&feature=fvwrel

I think you are going to have to go shopping for Ultrasuede, tulle, shisha mirrors, sparking buttons, crystals, and perhaps sequins and beads.  Once you know what is available to you, then we can make more choices.  Told you this was going to be fun as we ran wild with it!

"I'll try to get out on Sunday and do some shopping for this stuff."

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com