The Blue Wizard's Beads, Part One

Remember Jane’s Law for Christmas Needlepoint? It states one must use metallics, beads, sequins, fake jewels, anything glittery you can find on Christmas piece so your finished needlepoint will be able to compete with the Christmas tree lights and other ornaments. So our little ornament needed beads, and since I also needed to hide the seam where the ornament’s needlepointed front meets the backside’s fabric, why not bead there also? And since we are going way overboard (Jane’s Law!!!), why not add a beaded fringe to hang from the bottom? It is obvious that this little Santa doesn’t want anyone overlooking him come Christmas!

I already had a Swarovski-type crystal from Mill Hill to attach to his front and had chosen a variety of blue beads for him, so all I needed to do is make some decisions as to how to bead all the parts--the hanging loop, the edges and the fringe at the bottom. But first, let’s talk about the beads I added on top of the needlepoint before I put the ornament together.

Mill Hill sells crystals in various shapes and colors--snowflakes, hearts, flowers, drops, etc. I bought a package of three little blue round flower shapes and I wanted to use one on our wizard. There were several potential places to put it--on his pony tail clasp that holds his beard in check, on his robe, or on his hat. I just laid the crystal here and there and decided it looked best on his wizard’s hat.

There are a ton of beading websites which are helpful when you are deciding how to do simple things to your NP. (Any beaders out there? Got tips on good tutorials? And what are doubling back and bumper beads really called?) The techniques they teach you really will come in handy doing various things but for now, all we are going to talk about is doubling back and bumpers. The crystal has a hole in the middle, so there are two ways of securing it to the hat. I could come up in the middle repeatedly and then go down around the shape and hold it fast that way. But my middle hole isn’t very large and I was pretty sure I could only put the needle through it three times. So I used the doubling back/bumper technique. (Refer to the image above.)

This means I knotted my thread, came up through the hat in the center of the area where I wanted the crystal to be, put the needle through the middle of the crystal and pushed the crystal down to rest on the canvas. I checked the placement, just to make sure I got it right and threaded a tiny Mill Hill bead on the needle. Now I had the crystal on top of the canvas and the much smaller Petite Bead on top. Think stacking pancakes, ok? Needlepoint, large crystal, small bead. I simply took the needle and put it back through the crystal and then through the canvas again. This turns the little bead so that it lies on its side. The thread goes through the NP canvas and the crystal and the smaller bead, then makes a U turn, plunging through the crystal only back to the back side of my NP where I secured it. The small bead keeps the crystal in place securely, acting as a bumper. The trick is to find a bead just a little larger than the hole in the bead or crystal you want to attach. That way it holds the larger piece without any danger of being pulled back through the larger item’s hole. And a small bead doesn’t show much. Look for it in tomorrow’s photo and see if you can see it on top of the crystal.

Remember the doubling back/bumper stuff. I’m going to use the same steps to make the fringe for the bottom of this piece.This is getting quite long, so let’s take a break here. More tomorrow!




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Assembling a Wizard

The photo to the right shows the materials needed to assemble the Blue Wizard Santa, the ornament I finished stitching almost two months ago. It is going to rain all weekend here in Chilly Hollow and since I need a nice sunny day to finish stitching Fan the little Japanese girl canvas, I will use my days off to assemble the Blue Wizard into an ornament instead.

The Blue Wizard Santa is my own design, inspired by my friend Nina Goerres and her Fancy Carole Santa ornaments. Nina died last year but her memory lives on in her friends and in the new memorial award at the ANG Exhibit which will be for the best Christmas piece. Nina loved Christmas needlepoint and stitched a great deal of it herself. This little blue wizard is going to the ANG Auction and I’m hoping the money raised from it will go to the funding of Nina’s ribbon. ANG doesn’t just give out memorial ribbons like this. They have to be funded to cover the costs indefinitely. This is my way of contributing to the costs and thanking Nina for all she did for me over the years of our friendship.

Anyway, I’m ready to assemble the Blue Wizard into an ornament. I want it to be flat finished, which means no padding inside. I also want it to be light-weight, another reason to use plastic canvas as the stiffener inside instead of slightly heavier cardboard or foam core and to omit padding. So I made a color copy of the stitched piece, cut that out, and used it as a pattern to cut the plastic NP canvas (a tad smaller than the ornament) and also the back fabric (larger than the ornament). I am using a heavy cotton chintz fabric that has a sheen.

I plan to hand-stitch the front and back together around the top and sides, stuff the plastic canvas in through the bottom slit and then stitch that up. Afterwards I plan to cover the edge where the front and back meet with beads and also make a beaded loop to hang the ornament by. You can see packages of beads I pulled from The Stash to see which would work best in the image. My next step is to iron the fabric to get the wrinkles out and add beads and a blue crystal to the front of the wizard’s hat and robe. Then I’ll trim the finished canvas to about an inch from the edge, and sew the front and back sides together except across the bottom. Once the sides are stitched, I’ll insert the plastic canvas through the bottom slit, sew that together, and then start attaching beads all along the edges. I will also make a beaded loop to hang the ornament.

I hope to have all that done by tomorrow so I can start the beaded edge.


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

Autumn Leaves: The Tent Stitch Family (Half-Cross)

HALF-CROSS STITCH is stitched this way (see Threadneedle Street’s diagrams in the link below also).

http://www.threadneedlestreet.com/ContinentalHalfCross.html

Half-cross stitch uses the least amount of thread of all three tent stitches, so when you are running out of thread, switch to half-cross. However, there is very little padding on the back with half-cross. If you look on the back side diagram at Threadneedle Street’s link above, you see straight lines. It doesn’t distort as much as continental but it does pull things out of true some. Like continental, it may be worked in either horizontal or vertical rows. It also does very well in small areas or for outlining. But it is terrific when you only have a little bit of thread left and you aren’t worried about distortion or wear. It is worked from right to left (or left to right, doesn’t matter) just like continental in the first row. But in the second row you come up and go down the same way as in the first row instead of coming up in dirty holes like continental does.

http://www.stitchopedia.com/HalfCrossStitch.html

I will use all three stitches while stitching Autumn Leaves so you can see how they work up and what situations they are best suited for.

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Autumn Leaves: The Tent Stitch Family (Continental)

CONTINENTAL is stitched this way. (See Threadneedle Street’s diagrams in the link below).

http://www.threadneedlestreet.com/ContinentalHalfCross.html

This stitch (and half-cross) may be stitched in either horizontal or vertical rows. If you stitch it across a horizontal row, you work from right to left, then for the next row, you work from the left toward the starting point on the right, making sure that you come up in a “dirty” hole and go down in an empty one. (A “dirty” hole just means a hole in your needlepoint canvas that already has a stitched thread in it.) To stitch vertically, the first row goes down and then you work you way back up to the right of the first row, making sure the new row’s stitch comes up in a dirty hole from the row you just stitched.

Want to turn your square piece into a parallelogram? Continental is the stitch for you! Look at the back side. You’ll see long slants on the back and the regular tent stitch look on the front. This constant pull in one direction distorts the canvas a lot. There is a lot of thread on both sides of the canvas so continental wears ok, just not as well as basketweave.

But on the other hand, this is the perfect stitch for small areas like the tiny leaves we have in Autumn Leaves. I would not use it for a large area unless my canvas was on a frame, and even then I find my stitch tension is easier to control if I use basketweave. But it works very well in certain situations.


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Autumn Leaves: The Tent Stitch Family (Basketweave)

There are three types of tent stitch--basketweave, continental and half-cross. They look identical from the front but from the back of the canvas, they look very different. Each stitch has advantages and disadvantages which I’ll go over. Let’s start with basketweave. Here’s how you stitch it--

http://www.threadneedlestreet.com/Basketweave.html

Notice how the threads on the back look like a woven basket? That gives BASKETWEAVE its name. The fact that the threads run both horizontally and vertically means basketweave doesn’t distort the canvas nearly as much as its tent stitch cousins since it pulls the canvas both ways. All that thread on the back also means that this is a very durable stitch for rugs and upholstery. If you are going to sit or walk on your needlepoint, consider basketweave. However, it uses more thread than the other types of tent stitch. If you are worried about running out of thread, don’t do basketweave in more than a small area.

if you are left-handed, here’s how lefties do basketweave.

http://www.stitching.com/npg/bsktwve.htm

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