Thanks for Sharing Juanita!

Ok, I can't help it--I had to post one last link to Juanita, the Mexican Lady. This time, what you see below is the unstitched painted canvas from Melissa Shirley Designs. This is based on a painting by Carter Holman called Secrets. The design is available on either 13 or 18 count canvas. The photo you'll see is courtesy of Laura Zickus who photographed it for the Needlenook of La Jolla website. The classes with Brenda Hart Janet Moyer mentioned in her posts about the Mexican Lady are at Needlenook of La Jolla, but of course your local shop can order this canvas for you in the size you prefer straight from Melissa Shirley.

http://www.needlenookoflajolla.com/storedir/proddetail.php?prod=ch118-2

If you want to see more of Linda Carter Holman's art, visit her website here.

http://www.carterholman.com/

If you think about having to stitch enough on a piece to post photos and a description of what you've done each and every week, you will know what I've put Janet Moyer through over the last two months or so. She deserves our thanks for keeping to my deadlines and also being brave enough to show her mistakes, problems, successes and the final product to 1500-3000 people each and every Sunday over that time. Janet has also promised to send me a photo of Juanita and her bouquet when it comes back from the framers. So stay tuned.

But first, please give Dr. Janet Moyer a standing ovation.

Main blog at http:///

Juanita, the Mexican Lady, is finished

Many thanks to all of you who followed the Lady and who commented on her progress as I stitched on her through the past few months.

We all owe a big thank you to Linda Carter Holman for the original painting, to Melissa Shirley for putting the painting to needlepoint canvas, and to Jane of Chilly Hollow for allowing us to participate in this adventure on her blog.


I finished the branches the birds sit on, added more greenery around the roses, and stitched the birds. The branches are stitched in a Needle Necessities overdye (I think it was discontinued). Brenda Hart had suggested a whipped chain for the branches. I was watching T.V. as I stitched and had to laugh when I finished and realized I’d come up with a variation of the whipped chain. I liked the accidental variation as it added to the gnarly look of the branches. I will add the variation to my list of stitches.

The birds were stitched in basketweave in an Anchor floss (bright blue, #132). You cannot tell it from the picture but I made three layers of threads for the wings in a ray stitch. I kept stacking one layer over the other: first a metallic ribbon (Kreinik 1/16” # 850), then a deep purple/blue petite frosty ray (#PY370) and topped off with sewing machine metallic thread in two colors, silver and multi-color pastels. I also made two layers of the petite frosty rays for the bottoms of the birds’ tails.

You can see that I changed the calla lilies slightly by using fabric for the center and for the stamens. I may change them again but will leave them for now.

When I started this project I “chatted” with Linda Carter Holman via email about the piece she had entitled “Secrets.” I wondered aloud with her if the calla lilies
meant Resurrection (as seen in Easter) or death (particularly symbolic in the Victorian era). I also opined that the roses might mean life or love.

She responded that: “Calla Lilies do give a certain feeling-- Someone told me that it is the flower of the bride of Christ. I like that description. I Like that idea too --of Death and resurrection. These two ideas may come down to the same meaning. And Roses another flower that comes to -----love. The thorny path.”

So from this conversation I concocted Juanita’s back story. She is obviously a young woman, well dressed in Mexican clothing with the addition of her pearls and diamond jewelry. She is wearing a diamond ring on her left hand, a sign of being engaged. She is taking the calla lilies (death and Resurrection) to the grave of her deceased husband (see how prominent in size they are on the canvas?) and is also carrying roses for her living fiancé. I like the story as it alludes to Juanita’s secrets. There is a wonderful festival called “The Day of the Dead” in Mexico (especially in Oaxaca) where people go to the graves of their relatives and celebrate the dead. People dress up and take gifts to the graves. So, Juanita is celebrating also.

The night I was in Michael’s buying ribbon, floss, and beads for the roses, two Mexican women walked by, examined the canvas, and said they really liked it. I mentioned that I had been criticized for adding jewelry to ethnic clothing but I thought Juanita was dressed up for a festival of some kind. The two ladies agreed with me and said that women in a more southern part of Mexico dress like that. So, I was content that my interpretation was not culturally insensitive.

This entry ends our collaboration on Juanita. I’ve enjoyed the process and Look-I finished a needlepoint! I have an idea for the frame and if Jane would like to show the canvas in the frame, in the future, I will provide a picture.

Thank you for watching me stitch.

Janet in La La Land

Main blog at http:///

Thoughts on a Spring Day in Chilly Hollow

I’ve not had the time to finish Fan, the second of the two little Asian girls from Melissa Shirley designs, this week. It’s spring in Chilly Hollow and there is yard work to do whenever I can. But shortly I will have her all finished and take photos for you before Fan and Butterfly leave with their purse for the finisher to be turned into what I hope is an eye-catching delight for the Indian Wells ANG Seminar Auction.

If you are going, take lots of photos of the little girls and their new owner!

Now it is time to think about the next project. I’ve already promised to do an all-tent stitch project so that we can talk about the basics each stitcher needs to master, but before I start anything new, I have a pile of finishing to do. I have two heart ornaments, the little blue wizard Santa for the ANG Auction, and two mini stockings to finish and I’m going to do most of them myself. I don’t much like finishing but doing it myself is satisfying and cheap. I’ll start gathering the supplies I will need over the next week with visits to the crafts emporiums in the area for trim, backing fabric, quilt batting for stuffing, etc. And I promise to take photos and describe what I do to finish these pieces as long as you promise not to mention the glue I have in my hair. Deal?

Meanwhile a thunderstorm has just moved through and it is too wet and overcast to do either yard work or needlepoint, so I think I’ll relax with my copy of Needle Pointers for May 2008 which just arrived a day or so back. I read it cover to cover--the ads, the ANG officers’ report, everything. I always find neat stuff and today there’s a brief mention that Terry Dryden has a blog now.

I admire her designs, which are always different but not all that hard for someone with basic skills in needlepoint. She is primarily a teacher, but her retired class pieces are available as kits, which tickles me pink. I love her happy pastel colorways and I know I am going to check out her blog to see what someone who uses stitches in ways totally different from everyone else has to say. Here’s her redesigned website with the link to her Color Texture Stitch Journal blog. Have fun exploring!

http://www.terrydryden.com/

Jane, off to look at dogwoods in the rain once more but I’ll meet you at Terry’s shortly
UPDATE: Actually, I was unable to post to Blogspot last night. The rain slowed my Internet connection so much that I couldn't even log on to Blogspot. Sorry!


Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Mystery Geishas

This must be mystery week since I'm doing lots of mystery-themed writing. So here's another, two geisha embroideries on eBay whose techinques seem to be a mystery. I think the framed Japanese geisha is embroidered.

http://tinyurl.com/4wzt5o

And I think the "crocheted" geisha is actually chain stitch, which might make her Chinese.

http://tinyurl.com/4sjj73

What do you think?

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

More Color Mystery UPDATED

UPDATE: Thinking about this blog entry from yesterday, I'm not satisficd that I really conveyed what I meant to say, without giving away too many teacher secrets, of course. So I'm going to try again. Hopefully, what I'm getting at about choosing colors for charted designs, using a Gay Ann Roger's new design as an example, will make more sense. Communication is so hard!


Gay Ann Roger's blog is full of information about her mystery design called "Mystery in a Corner." She's posted how to order the chart on 4/24/08 and she has also been posting photos of various thread combinations that folks have ordered. The 4/24 posting has a picture of the piece itself, but you only see the center. The "mystery" is how the corners unfold. You won't know that until you actually stitch them!

http://gayannrogers.blogspot.com/

To see the photos of thread combos, scroll down to the left side of the home page and click on the March 2008 archive. Roll to the bottom of the page and start looking at the pictures. Remember, the latest blog entry is above earlier ones, so you'll have to navigate your way through the entries, looking for postings of the 32 different combinations. The reason they are important is what they say about our own color choices. Notice how many have blue or purple or red as the main color? That makes me think that most folks prefer those colors these days. Purple may be the burnt orange of the 1970s....

In Gay Ann's cyber classroom for the Shining Needle Society she is holding a color discussion which I found interesting. GAR is asking, "Which color combination do you like? Why?"

Myself, I'm fondest of the thread grouping #29 which is shown above, because I like at least three contrasting colors in charted designs and I also liked the perle cotton thread. Folks who already have their charts and have started stitching say that the perle cotton is very prominent in the center of the design (looks to me that you use the perle cotton to do the framework for the center section which you can see in the photograph of the center of this pattern, so I went through the pictures, choosing first the color combos I liked, then I winnowed out choices if I wasn't crazy about the perle cotton in a set. Finally, I looked for thread combos with more colors instead of ones with various shades of only 1-2 colors. I think designs with only one shade don't show off detail very well.

But the real question here is--what colors do you like? And WHY?

Many thanks to Gay Ann Rogers for a very thought-provoking question.

If you are curious about the classes the Shining Needle Society facilitates, you should head to Yahoo Groups and sign up for the SNS homeroom, which is the place where new class announcements are made. Gay Ann Rogers' class is open, which means she allows auditors like me, but most classes are not. To participate in the class you will either audit the class for a small fee if you have the design already but want to sit through class again to help motivate you to finish it, or you will pay the full teaching fee and buy your kit either through the teacher or gather supplies yourself, depending on how that teacher structures that class.

Now! Hope this all makes more sense.

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow