Introducing the Baroque Fish UPDATED

The next Household Pet Guardian Angel from Kandy Merric's inventive mind is the Baroque Fish. You can see the original model over on the right side of the page.

The drawing is faint as I don't want the color to show through my threads but you get the general idea. This angel has a beautiful stitch for its skirt that is partly underway. I am using 4 plies of Splendor silk in a dark turquoise blue #S865 for the skirt.

The trim is lovely and much simpler to stitch than the Victorian Parakeet's. I am using green 008 Kreinik 1/16" ribbon and a doubled strand of Tiara #T109 which is a blend of blue and green and gold to stitch the pattern. The front panel of her skirt is DMC #5 cotton perle in a light blue #959. That same thread is used on the sleeve which I have started. If you look at the model, you'll see the sleeve is slashed and an inner, contrasting color shows through. That's what I am stitching now.

Speaking of angels, are you familiar with the needle minder magnets from Kelmscott Designs? Their newest magnets are alphabet angels. The best photos I found of all the angels are here, although they are available at many U.S. shops. Many thanks to Nordic Needle, whose shop e-newsletter mentioned these!
https://www.sewandso.co.uk/ran2702-0.html

Finally, this week is the beginning of the needle retreat at Callaway Gardens. Gay Ann Rogers teaches there and is starting to post photos on her website. Ever wondered what the editor of NP Now looks like? Who actually runs the show? Etc.? You can browse here and see new photos almost every day of the two session's fun.
http://www.gayannrogers.com/

UPDATE: I've changed the URL to GAR's website to her home page. Find the Callaway link for there as the actual address changes when she updates with more pictures. The third set of photos is a slide show of the beautiful items in Betty Chen Louis' classroom. If you are a fan of her work, you are going to love this!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

The Victorian Parakeet, Halo and All

Last night I put the finishing touches on my version of Kandace Merric's Victorian Parakeet. I backstitched a bit around the winged hands and the parakeet's head with my grey Medici, then added a halo using the three metallics I have already used in this project--Caron's orange Snow, the Kreinik purple with orange highlights that inspired the color scheme, and a bit of dark purple Accentuate #140.

I'd already used the Accentuate on the purple skirt area but not mentioned it to you. If you look back at earlier photos of the Victorian Parakeet, the purple skit seemed to have bare canvas showing through the areas where the stepped stitch used in most of this design met. The orange areas, that use the same stitch oriented in a different direction, didn't have this bare spot. I'm not sure why this appeared in the vertical stitch orientation and not in the horizontal. Usually it's upright stitches where you don't have full coverage. You can take a length of #8 perle cotton and stitch a diagonal sittch on 18 count NP canvas and it'll cover ok, but that same thread on the same count canvas in a stitch that is vertical may not cover. That's something you take into account when you switch threads called for in a stitch guide. You might have to use a more plies for the upright stitches if the substitute thread is skinnier than the original. Play around with this on your scrap canvas using a Mosaic stitch and a bargello stitch and you'll see what I mean.

That doesn't seem to have happened here, but I've always heard that very dark colors make thread slightly thinner. My purple silk is Soie d'Alger and I think the orange silk is also. Could it be the number of times the purple silk had to go through the chemicals of the dye bath to achieve that rich royal purple made the plies a bit thinner than the orange silk? May be. If I'd noticed ahead of time I could have used 5 plies of silk in the purple areas instead of 4, but I didn't.

That's where the purple Accentuate came in--I back stitched with a doubled strand of it right over the bare areas. If you squint at the photo you'll see the purple metallic in the skirt.

I've really enjoyed stitching Kandace Merric's Victorian Parakeet. For some reason, I'm the only person who volunteered to stitch a parakeet so I wanted her to be extra special, with deep, rich colors and a slightly different halo to make her stand out from the rest as much as possible. I hope I suceeded! This was a challenging stitch --that braid trim was hard to do, I had trouble at first getting the right look to the parakeet's wings and head, those durn bare spots in the skirt--but I think I overcame the challenges and I don't always want to stitch an easy piece. I like challenge with my NP, thank you very much!

Kandace Merric delivers with fascinating designs and interesting stitches, and I have had a very good time with the Medieval Cat and now the Victorian Parakeet in the Household Pet Guardian Angel series.

Next up--the Baroque Fish!


Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Beatrice, The Renaissance Rat Pet Guardian Angel

The beauty above is Beatrice, Joanne's household pet guardian angel. She's a rat from the Renaissance, and one of the eleven household pet guardian angels destined for the ANG Auction which I'm not stitching.

Here's Joanne to tell you in her own words how Beatrice came to be stitched.

"When Jane asked me what ornament I wanted to stitch after I volunteered, I said, I don't care, you choose. Then I saw the pictures she sent me and I said, definitely the RAT, I love the rat! I loved her florentine dress, both the colors and the stitch, and since I was in Florence last year, I felt she was calling to me. I named her Beatrice in honor of Dante's Beatrice and in memory of my trip.

I didn't change much, if anything, of the original instructions except changing the cotton threads for silk. Since I liked the colors, I pulled the DMC colors and matched them in a combination of Needlepoint Inc and Splendor. The only thing I'm sorry about is that the beautiful Gloriana perle I chose didn't cover the canvas well, so I stuck with floss. Her wings are floche with a little bit of blending filament, her face is Burmilana, and her halo is pearl purl with some tambour thread accents. Since Jane had asked for a DMC ecru background to match the other angels, that's what I used.

And now we wait for the finishing instructions - Jane swears I can do it!"

Of course you can, Joanne. Once I finish my parakeet, Pat finishes her rabbit and Margaret finishes her dog, we'll start finishing. I'm going to rough out instructions, Pat (who is a marvelous finisher) will look over them, then we'll all jump in and finish our angels. I'll post the instructions we used here and the other stitchers will finish their angels so that we have a similar-looking set to auction off to one lucky bidder at the ANG Auction during the Milwaukee Seminar this fall.



Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Elizabethean Embroidery in All Its Glory

The painting on the left is Mary, Queen of Scots, the spiritual ancestor of needlepointers today. She's five years old in the portrait, which comes from the Mary, Queen of Scots website.
http://www.maryqueenofscotland.co.uk/

I've been following with great interest the development of Elmsley Rose's blog. ER is stitching a sampler of Elizabethean stitches and gives source material and nice photos of her sampler as it develops. I am no historical reproduction stitcher, but I can certainly admire what she is doing. It's fascinating to watch, especially since if Queen Mary herself showed up to read ER's blog, she'd recognize the stitching and feel right at home.
http://elmsleyrose.blogspot.com/

If you get addicted to period stitching, you'll want to follow Plimoth Plantation's stitching of an Elizabethean jacket. These are the folks who commissioned the new Gilt Sylke Twist thread which is now available for those special touches on your needlework.
http://www.plimoth.org/embroidery-blog/

Jane Zimmerman's new website has been fun to watch also. She doesn't just do geometric samplers in needlepoint, she has written a great many articles on stitching throughout history and a lot of them are appearing on her website.
http://www.janezimmerman.com/

If you want to take a fascinating class on Elizabethean stitching, you can't go wrong by having Carole Lake visit your guild. Check these out. The first link is a one-day class, the second four full days of fun and history.
http://www.carolelake.com/TeachingPieces/Thistle.htm
http://www.carolelake.com/TeachingPieces/MaryQueen.htm

Those who don't know their own history are doomed to miss out on a lot!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Finished Play Pretties to Admire UPDATED

Last night saw a rather tired Jane basketweaving a little bit. My progress isn't worth showing so how about I distract you with some fabulous finished pieces from other places? After all, if you don't like animals or Asian-themed pieces, you have been a bit disappointed here lately!

First, let's head to Michele Herron's blog to see her last four pieces, all shoe shaped! Two are Western boot canvases and two are Christmas stockings. All four are wonderful to see. Michele owns The Bristly Thistle in Michigan. You probably remember her Halloween canvas with the little kids marching in a row on their way to trick or treat. She calls her blog Neeldepoint Tips and Tricks and tells you what threads and stitches she chose for these designs plus she has a nice little blog entry about how to chart names for stocking tops. I love her blog!

http://bristlythistle.blogspot.com/

Next, how about we go see Ruth Schmuff? Ruth also owns a shop right outside of Baltimore called Bedecked and Beadazzled and is a NP designer, too. Her blog is full of pieces she's stitched for the shop or for classes. You may remember the pastel pink Melissa Shirley Santa she was stitching. It is covered in crystals, fur and fancy stitches. My kind of Santa! It is back from the finisher's and it is lovely.

http://www.tistheseason.org/blog/ruthsBlog.html

You should browse a bit. Ruth has photos of the many ways to finish the shop's new snowman club designs (that helped me decide to put my Squiggee canvas on a photo album cover) and shows off a gorgeous pillow as an example of how finishing really "makes" a stitched piece. Do not forget to go to the second page to see her cat portrait, complete with whiskers! To navigate her blog, click on the links under Recently on the right side of the page or open a month in the Archives and start reading there. Ruth loves finishing and embellishing painted canvases and posts great photos of her work to inspire us.

Finally, for something completely different, let's head to Edy's blog. Edy is sampler-mad! She has two blogs, a personal one, and a blog that collects photos of finished cross stitch samplers with detail like the designer name, the fabric count of the ground fabric, etc. If you enjoy samplers, you will want to bookmark and visit Edy's collection and perhaps contribute photos of your own work there.

http://galleryofsamplers.blogspot.com/

Edy's sampler blog is a great place to get framing ideas, find a designer whose style you like, or just get ideas for the next chart to add to your collection. Great idea, Edy!

UPDATE: Edy tells me the sampler collection blog isn't hers (although she's contributed to it), just her personal website that talks about her samplers and of course her ten darling grandkids under the age of eleven. Way to go, Edy! What fun! Here is Edy's personal blog.
http://grandmaelf.blogspot.com/

Now let's return to our regularly scheduled programming--I basketweave while we all complain about the winter weather!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow