Friday, July 10, 2009

Even More Pet Guardian Angels Arrive


I have three new pet guardian angels lurking in my house. The first one is not finished yet but because my scanner does a better job with unfinished pieces and I wanted you to see the dog's wonderful face, I am posting a photo of the ornament before it's made up. Nancy stitched it one-handed in honor of her Schnauzer Cookie. I am amazed that she did this with only one hand (she hurt her other) and that the face is so real! Nancy tells me she used a special thread for the fur called 100% Suri Alpaca Thread and it comes from Salt River Mills. It is distributed by The First and Last Stitch in St. Louis. She says it is for 13-18 count canvas which meant she could handle one strand one-handed and do long and short stitch on Cookie's face and paw with three shades of charcoal gray.
http://www.saltrivermills.com/Needlepoint_-_Yarn.html

http://www.firstandlast.com/






The second two angels just arrived from South Africa today. Odette stitched them and added all sorts of special touches, like crystal butterflies, a delicate beak, beaded halos, lovely green wings, a perfect little rabbit face, etc. I wish you could see them in person. My scanner does a decent job but you have to see Odette's stitching in person to appreciate it.



Aren't they amazing? I am constantly blown away by the artistry of all the stitchers who contributed to this project.

Tomorrow I will start assembling Nancy's angel for her. With only one hand, she just can't do this. Hopefully I'll do OK with two hands! Cookie the Tudor Dog deserves my very best finishing.

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

What's Wrong With This Picture?




See this photo? I grabbed it from the Leigh Designs website. Notice anything different about it? No? Look at the photo on the left or the one in my last blog entry of the South Seas Fiji Dynasty ornament canvas I'm stitching. See any differences?

I got a horrified email from Leigh Richardson last night. She's the charming and talented woman behind Leigh Designs. She finally took a moment from her busy schedule to look at what I was doing with her South Seas Fiji and noticed----gasp!

My right side is black. Leigh sells this design with a shade of purple she calls "grape" on the right side. She says in the painting stage one of her artists accidentally painted the right side black. Leigh thought all those had been found and destroyed but somehow mine slipped through the cracks!
http://www.leighdesigns.com/Sgl8253.html

I feel like one of those folks who goes to the post office and buys some stamps to find out later they are worth millions because the shade of red on the American flag stamp is too raspberry. Leigh thinks the grape version is much lovelier but I am not giving up my black custom piece. Not only do I love black with the other colors and think it looks more like barkcloth, I have a Leigh Original!

Besides terrorizing innocent designers, last night I also worked a bit more on the boring border around Cape Cod Dogs. If I work really hard tonight I should finish it. At last!

I'm sorry I upset Leigh and sorry I'm so boring with my blog postings these days. Basketweave doesn't make for fascinating blog posts. But I have something more interesting for you tomorrow--promise!

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

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Duplicating Barkcloth



If you hang out at vintage clothing and fabric stores, you'll be familiar with barkcloth. I always associated it with the 1940s but a quick search showed me that it was popular in the 1950s-1970s. Barkcloth is a heavy (upholstry weight) cotton fabric that is slightly ribbed. It was used for curtains, pilows and casual chair coverings when I was a child and gave a tropical feel to a room. In my area I see the vintage fabric recycled into tote bags and pillows. Here is a fabric site with a good selection of reproduction fabric in typical patterns.
http://www.jandofabrics.com/products.asp?id=18&PageIndex=2&PageSize=12&viewall=True

When I looked at my Leigh South Seas Dynasty ornament (the original unstitched canvas is shown above), barkcloth was what I thought of. Doesn't the right side of the ornament look like fabric to you? The areas that aren't black have washes of color on top of the sea green NP canvas. I don't want to loose that shading and I want to make this look slightly ribbed so I choose to lay long stitches horizontally across just the green areas with one ply of Thread Gatherer's Seaform Green (a sea green-blue-olive green mix). These stitches do not cover the black areas. I will handle them differently.



The photo above shows what I have so far. I am busy couching down the silk with Accentuate 331 which is an opalescent white. The couching stitches are in a sort of brick stitch pattern, which is often referred to as Burden Stitch. It's slow going. I have to make sure I don't mess up the pattern as I jump from area to area. I started work by doing one long vertical line of couching stitches across the widest part of the area that covered as many green spots as possible. Now I'm working each section based off that. It's very slow going. You have to be careful not to pull the couching stitches too tightly or the long horizontal stitches are pulled out of straight lines.

It's not only basketweave that is slow and boring stitching!

Speaking of which, I am still working on the border of Cape Cod Dogs. I made the mistake of working on the outside padded red border last night when tired and realized I was slanting the / stitches over the Very Velvet padding the wrong way and had to pull out one length of thread. Oh, well, ripping out just reminds me not to stitch when tired. It's a lesson I need to relearn periodically!

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

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

From Playing with Fire to Playing with Water N Ice


Cape Cod Dog's window has been completely covered with Water N Ice and I'm continuing work on the border. Didn't finish that last night but I was slightly distracted by testing some stitches for the South Seas: Fiji ornament. So today I'd like to talk about Water N Ice a bit more. I forgot to mention that when stitching the window view on Cape Cod Dogs, I used two colors of Water N Ice. I used the original clear WT1 (which looks like thick saran wrap cut into strips) in 90% of the window but at the bottom where the view was of the ocean, I switched to Water N Ice WT2, which is blue. I hoped to make the blue water even bluer than it was painted. The last 2-3 rows are all blue. If a row of stitches overlapped water and land, I used the clear Water N Ice as I thought blue land would look odd. I like how the use of both colors continued the glassy look but gave a boost of blue to the water seen through the window.

Water N Ice comes in many colors. Here are the online links at the Rainbow Gallery website I found--
http://www.rainbowgallery.com/detail.cfm?ID=939

http://www.rainbowgallery.com/detail.cfm?ID=1071

http://www.rainbowgallery.com/detail.cfm?id=1215

It also comes in Navy and in the original Clear but I didn't see those colors on the color card page. In the photo above you see (top row, left to right) the blue WT2 and the clear WT1 and (bottom row) the new Pearl Ice color WT12 which has a frosted look compared to the original Clear WT1. The new frosted Pearl Ice isn't as see-through as the original Clear and has some pink and green highlights. It resembles opalescent white metallic threads which often have the same highlights.

If you are stitching a margerita glass, you will want to use Pearl Ice. If you are stitching a water glass, use the original Clear. Long stitches work better to showcase this thread's glassy or wet look.

In other news, Gay Ann Rogers is experimenting with adding videos to her website. Her first short movie is an interview with the nicest and funniest NP teacher in captivity--Carole Lake. Catch it now. I don't think it will be left up on GAR's website long.
http://www.gayannrogers.com/site_2/Surprise_Video.html

Judy Soulitis has redone her website and announces her retirement from teaching except at Callaway and via the Internet in places like the Shining Needle Society. Be sure you look at the Sales section of her website to pick up a kit for a class you always wanted to take. Also, note that she has various section listed on the left side of the page and a slide show in the upper right hand corner. Don't want you to miss any of the eye candy because honey, she can stitch!
http://www.judysneedlework.com/

Barbara Elmore also has revamped her website and has added a blog. There is a lot to see as Barbara also makes jewelry, is a photographer and teaches.
http://www.barbaraelmoredesigns.com/Home/Godaddy.html

While you amuse yourselves I'm going to work on Cape Cod Dog's border. I've got the outside red padded edge to add on most of two sides and have the black background to tent stitch around one side still. I'm also working on the last side's red letters in cross stitch. To keep from dying of boredom, I cut a length of black Impressions and do the basketweave black background. When that runs out, I cut off a length of red Mandarin floss and cover the Very Velvet for the padded outside edge. Then I switch to a short piece of Hi-Lights to cross stitch another letter. It keeps me from being bored although progress on any of these three items of the border are slow this way.

Happy stitching!

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

Making a Boring Border Better


I didn't mention several things when I posted about the Cape Cod Dogs window yesterday. If you looked closely at the photograph then, you saw I'd already finished the inside red border (tent stitches in the silk perle Elegance) and added a new element to the border--an outside red line, broader than the thin one on the inside edge of the border. The success I had padding Ch'ing the Chinese Red Dragon's face with Very Velvet meant I wanted to try padding again, especially when Carole emailed me about her current Melissa Shirley Santa stocking (photo above).




Carole used Petite Very Velvet as padding under her stocking top. She says, "I used the Petite Very Velvet to pad and then did Ribbon Floss over it. The holding power of the PVV is awesome. My Ribbon Floss has never looked better--you can't see the individual threads. It stands up just little above the PVV background in the blue."

Carole has a second similar Melissa Shirley mini stock with a pink and white peppermint top and plans to stitch it the same way. This looks great, doesn't it? Cape Cod Dogs isn't quite as gorgeous (I don't have any red ribbon floss and believe me, I looked!) so I laid down a long line of red Very Velvet around the edge of the original black border and have been stitching slanted stitches over it using all 6 plies of a card of red Mandarin Floss. It looks very nice in person and gives the border a very nice touch. Of course I still have tons of boring background to stitch, but at least with the Very Velvet padding it looks very nice. Here's a closeup from yesterday's photo.



Wish me luck finishing the last black border background, the red lettering and the padded red border all around the outside.

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