Meaning Behind Cape Cod Dogs

Cape Cod Dogs they don't chase cars they like to pick up girls in bars!

I have been meaning to write a bit about the meaning behind this canvas for me. I've gotten several comments about this design really meaning men were dogs, but for me, this isn't the case. I chose the design originally because I knew it would make my husband laugh. He lived along the Massachusetts coast for around ten years and loved the place and the people, so this very typical local dive celebrates that time in his life.

The artist Elizabeth Mumford has many paintings similar to this one--featuring mermaids paired with other creatures and funny sayings in the border. If you browse a bit on her website you'll see many designs that are like Cape Cod Dogs. These are signature elements of her painting style.
http://www.elizabethmumford.com/

There are mermaids as nurses, mermaids decorating the Christmas tree on a cold winter night, or in the kitchen with a Golden Retriever cooking. You should know that there is a famous tavern on Nantucket called The Black Dog which is named after the founder's black lab mixed breed dog. Dogs are often symbols of the ocean-faring folks in Massachusetts.

Knowing that and that Ms. Mumford replaces women in her art with mermaids, the mermaids and dogs in Cape Cod Dogs are stand-ins for the regular people who live on the Cape. So this piece is a tribute to those folks who were my husband's friends, but symbolized by magical creatures. That's one reason I stitched all the liquor bottles in sparkling metallics. These are magic potions instead of beer and cheap hard liquor or wine, capable of turning the most normal bleached blonde into a mermaid or her suitor into a fabulous cuddly talking dog. Or in making the bar a home-away-from-home for people who are out for a drink and good conversation with their neighbors and friends.

Cape Cod Dogs is the friendly and comforting Cheers bar of the tv show brought to life by needle and thread and populated by fabulous creatures.

At least that is how the design is playing out in my head. That's the fantastic thing about painted canvases, you see. One takes the original artist's design and turns it into something personal and unique....

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

New Wine and Champagne Glasses (Plus Wood)

As you can see, I've redone the wine glass by the mermaid's hand, stitching in slanting long diagonal stitches in one strand of clear Accentuate paired with one strand of red Sulky machine sewing thread in the Holoshimmer 145-6014. Sulky makes lots of styles of thread for machine embroidery. Holoshimmer looks like a thin strip of Fyrewerks if you are familiar with that thread.

The wine glasses just above the dog's whiskey glass have been redone as well. They are in two shades of blue Accentuate and my clear 300 Accentuate, one strand in tent stitches.

Here's a closeup of yesterday's glasses for comparison purposes.


I like the new version of barware, although I probably will outline the red wine glass with a thin black thread which is how it is painted once the bar top is stitched.

I've started on the wooden wall and shelves behind the bar. The wall itself is completely stitched in my Soy Luster Solid Color #Sedona Hills 176, one strand, in Alternating Oblong Cross, a stitch I found on page 22 of Stitches for Effect. This is my long skinny cross stitch done over three horizontal threads. Do one skinny cross stitch, drop down a thread, repeat the stitch, jump back to the original position and stitch, drop down again, etc. In the photo it looks like brick stitch but in person you can see the Xs and also some of the paint underneath. I am hoping this looks like the rough texture of a plywood wall. These beer joints all along the ocean south of Boston are thrown together things, meant for the summer trade and then expanded as more people live in the area year around.

The line that separates the plywood portion from the shelves of alcoholic beverages is just continental stitch in some of my light brown Trebizond silk perle. I also stitched the white frame at one side of the window, using white DMC cotton perle in size #5. This is not my favorite thread (I prefer #8 perle for 18 count) but it raises the section that was stitched to make it more like woodwork. I switched to #8 white DMC cotton perle for the round duck head piece on the wood panel and also used the smaller size on the square framed thing I plan to make a square bottle of liquor. Various thicknesses of thread can really come in handy. It's one thing that makes the Kreinik line of metallics so important to me--I can choose from various thicknesses in the colors for various effects.

The edge of the shelves is a line of continental stitch in another shade of Trebizond silk, but this time I unraveled the Trevizond's perle twist to give me three plies. Trebizond unravels on me as I stitch and I tried using it this way to see if that looked as good as regular Trebizond (on the wall under the window) and stitched easier. I like how it looks, although it isn't as raised as the Trebizond under the window. But that's ok for what I'm doing. When a thread misbehaves, if you can't set fire to it (I kept my Water N Ice from unraveling as I worked with it by touching a blown out hot match head to the end) then try using it another way.

The last thing I've done is to start on the background of the shelves. I am basketweaving this in three shades of brown. I discovered yesterday that the dark brown Sampler Thread I planned to use is actually dark olive brown so I pulled a skein of #838 DMC cotton floss out and used it for the darkest shadows (4 plies). I've finished those and have started on the lightest background using my Needle Necessities overdyed cotton # 125 (also 4 plies). The medium shades will be a mix of these two cotton flosses, probably half and half although I'll experiment to get the look I want of something between the very dark brown shadows and the cinnamon brown highlights. By the way, I'm mostly turning Cape Cod Dogs upside down for my tent stitching of the shelves. They are easier to reach without touching other stitched areas that way.

I really have gotten into this piece, leaving poor South Seas Fiji languishing, but I never was a big fan of rotations because I get obsessed with what will happen next in my stitching. Think of Cape Cod Dogs as a really good soap opera....

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

Jane Becomes Enthralled With Stitching Glasses

Yesterday I got fascinated by the various threads and stitches I could use to stitch the glasses on the bar and in the shelf behind the bar.  I abandoned South Seas Fiji entirely and stitched bottles, a wineglass, a shot glass and champagne glasses, not to mention a tall glass.  If you look at the photo above, I'll talk about the threads and stitches I used for each type of glass.  The threads are shown in the photo below.   The top row (left to right) is the new Water N Ice "Pearl Ice WT12" and Gilt Sylke Twist in 5131 Lincolne Grene.  The bottom row, again left to right, is Dede Odgen's Prisms #P-1, Accentuate #300 from Access Commodities, Kreinik's 052F Grapefruit in blending filament, and finally the original Water N Ice in Clear WT1.  Note that Kreinike 052F is a glow in the dark thread.

Let's look at the tall glass next to the central mermaid's face.  This is a glass suitable for a Tom Collins.  I used the original Water N Ice in long diagonal stitches for this.  I did try vertical stitches thinking that they would emphasize the tallness of this glass but that didn't look good so I pulled them out and used diagonal stitches instead.  

The next glass is the wine glass the mermaid holds.  I used the original clear Water N Ice for this also and used horizontal long stitches.  I'm not happy about how it looks because the red wine is de-emphasized.  I'll be pulling this out today.

The tall green bottle is included because it was my first foray into stitching with Gilt Sylke Twist, the very expensive 16th Century reproduction thread that is flat silk wrapped with gold metallic.  This is a gorgeous thread under artificial light!  It sparkled like mad while I was stitching with it last night.  I did my green bottle in tent stitches for the upper half and elongated tent stitches for the last 4 rows, switching back to tent for the very bottom row.  A little gray Accentuate makes up the label and the cap on the top.  The thread is like a thin flexible wire.  I had not trouble stitching with it although it certainly feels different than the threads we are used to.  It adds a touch of sparkle to the focal point of the canvas, which is why I used it.  (Plus I was dying to try it out--Threadaholics like me can't resist a new thread.  Thanks for providing the temptation, Sara Leigh!)  I think this thread will look best done in long decorative stitches on top of a canvas. It is very expensive as you see from the price tag but on the right design, it'll be worth every penny.  The original threads and embroideries this was reproduced from must have made the garments they decorated sparkle like stars.  I would have loved to have seen the King of France and his court dressed in fabulous embroidered robes at a ball in candlelight!

Moving on to the left you see champagne glasses on the shelf just under the dog's head.  I stitched the outlines only of these using two strands of my Accentuate #300 in continental.  I tried using long stitches with Water N Ice, didn't like it, pulled them out and tried tent stitching the entire glass with Water N Ice, didn't like that either.  (More ripping out.)  These glasses need to just be sketched in since they are right under the dog's head.  Using anything more than a tent stitch outline makes them too prominent and detracts from the dog's face.   We want to see him looking at the mermaid, perhaps talking to her.  We don't want the central focus to be on glasses!  Eventually I will fill in the area that isn't the champagne glass outline with the same brown threads used for the wooden shelves.  

Moving further left, there are 6 wine glasses on the shelf, some hung upside down, some standing.  I tried a variety of stitches and threads here.  Like the champagne glasses, I tried clear Water N Ice in long stitches first but that looks odd, not like glasses at all.  Next I used my Kreinik 052F blending filament doubled in tent stitches, Interlocking Goblein and then in long skinny cross stitches.  I am not happy with any of the looks and will pull these out later on as well.  I think the glasses are too prominent in the glass threads.  I am going to use blue, purple and white Accentuate to stitch the glasses next and we'll see how that looks.

The last glass is the highball glass on the bar just above the dog's paw.  It turned out the best of all the glasses in my opinion.  I used the new Water N Ice Frosted Pearl #WT12 in long horizontal stitches to cover the painted area, then added a very vertical and horizontal stitches in one strand of my Kreinik blending filament #052F on top.  This glass has white outlines painted in and the Kreinik emphasized them.  I like the look.  In my opinion the Frosted Ice Water N Ice needs a little more space to really look good and this is the largest glass.  

If you are keeping track, you know I did not use the Prisms thread.  This resembles the new Frosted Ice Water N Ice (except that it is very narrow instead of wide) with a lot of pink and green highlights.  I am keeping it in reserve in case the wine glasses I'm going to restitch don't look good in the threads I plan to use.

I also worked on more bottles last night.  I have two to go, the black and grape bottle on the second shelf from the top and the square item on the third shelf down.  I received several ideas about what this was:  a framed photo, the first dollar the bar made framed, a postcard, or perhaps the liquor license.  The area is really small and so I think I''m going to turn this into a square whiskey bottle with a gold stopper on top.  I think that will look more in keeping with the other items which are all liquor bottles or glasses of one type or another.  

Finally (sorry this is so long!) I need to report that most people preferred the jpeg image if they could tell a difference.  The PNG image is much larger, takes longer to upload to Blog, and takes up more room.  So I will continue to use jpeg images when posting images here. Many thanks to everyone who looked and told me what they saw!  On another image note, eBay has a new image format that makes it impossible to copy images from listings so my plan to capture as many images of Anne Jerlow canvases as possible for posterity is at an end.  

I'm off to get more coffee and start ripping out wine glasses!

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

Cape Cod Dogs

Here is the same picture again in a different format, for your viewing pleasure to tell me which image format gives us better images. Thanks for letting me know!

My plan for the weekend is to finish up the couching on South Seas Fiji. I haven't worked on my second piece at all this weekend as I found it too hard to count correctly after a long day at work. But I really want to get this section finished before Monday rolls around again.

Who turns the clocks forward on the weekends anyway? They always are much shorter than the same 48 hours during the work week!

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

Brown Wood Paneling

Last night I finished stitching the shadows under the bar and also finished the dark wood paneling under the window.  The lighter raised wooden areas are done in Trebizond, a silk perle thread that is fatter than the overdyed Wildflowers cotton perle I am using for the dark brown shadows and wall paneling.  The picture shows both threads lying on top of the canvas so you can see how the tent stitches in Trebizond (the lighter curl of thread) are fatter than the Wildflower ones (the dark brown thread across the mermaid's face).   I took advantage of this size difference to make the raised wood strips (Trebizond) that separate the panels more dimensional than the background tent stitches (Wildflowers).  Both threads are stitched in tent stitches but they look different because of one thread is shiny silk and fatter than the other which is a dull cotton.  

I like using the various characteristics of threads this way.  I didn't have to come up with another stitch for the raised area on the wall.  Just using a different thread in the same stitch gave me the effect I wanted.  By the way, I used two colors of Trebizond (865 Mocha Cream is the dark reddish-brown and 863 Mocha Cream is the lighter shade).  

I hope you can tell that the denser shadow area is all stitched now.  It makes the floor look very light.  

The next step is to work on the wall between the window and the bookshelves full of liquor bottles.  I think I might use the same brick stitch I used for the window glass....

By the way, I am posting this photo twice.   It dawned on me when I asked everyone to look at yesterday's photo and compare it to the day before yesterday's, that the earlier image was one of two in a blog entry.  This probably reduces image quality.   So this time I am posting one photo per entry and asking you guys if you see any difference.  Please let me know if you prefer Brown Wood Paneling's photo or South Seas Fiji's.

Thanks for being my guinea pigs!

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