Brenda Hart is Queen of the Universe Today

Remember this list of winners from the 2009 ANG Seminar exhibit in Milwaukee?


Category 5 Painted Design with stitch guide
(Non professional)
1 Vicky Lamers Fiona's Carnevale Mask
2 Evelyn Cavis Sweet Dreams
3 Shereen Ikeda Japanese Crane Scroll

HM Evelyn Cavins Dirty Boots
HM Susan Swan Anemones


I got a note from Brenda Hart this morning that said this,
"Jane, I thought I'd mention that Vicki Lamers, Evelyn Cavins, and Sue Swan all did their pieces in my class.  Vicki is from Tucson, Evelyn is from Santa Barbara, and Sue Swan is from Tucson.  Sue's piece is by Diane O'Leary, Evelyn's Sweet Dreams is by Sandra Gilmore, her Trail Boots (actual name) is by Boots Bailey, and as you know Fiona is by Leigh Designs.  I know I shouldn't be bragging, but I can't help myself."


Brenda, if my students had taken three of the five ribbons in a category at the ANG Seminar exhibit, I'd take out an ad on the front page of the New York Times!  Many congratulations to Brenda Hart and her students.  This is a job well done!

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

Is My Sky Too Big?

Last night I completed the sky in a variation of Ming stitch (Page 91 of Brenda Hart's Stitches for the Millennium) using one ply of my Thread Gatherer's overdyed silk (color Seafoam Green).  As you can see, I stitched right over the palm tree fronds.  If I'm careful and use a sharp needle, the fronds can be stitched on top of the background stitches without disturbing them.

However, Liz thinks that perhaps the Ming Variation #3 stitch is too large in scale.  I will think about this today and just work on Glittering Kimono couching of my H-Q rows. I don't know if Liz is right or not but if I decide she is, this is the time to rip out.  I don't want to do palm fronds until I am sure about the stitch they go on top of.  As usual when I am thinking about a stitch, I will work on another item and put this one up where I can see it as I walk around the house.  Eventually I will decide whether Liz is right.  Scale is very important in needlework. If the background stitch is too large, the piece will be an irritant.  So I'll take time to think this over.  Thanks for the critique, Liz!  We can get too close to our stitching and not see how good/bad it is!  I love getting comments from Blog readers as otherwise I have no input on my stitching at all.  There are no other needlepointers near me in Chilly Hollow.

Anyone else have thoughts about the sky background stitch?

The other thing I worked on last night is the white foam on the edges of the waves rolling into the beach.  My canvas came with a two page stitch guide.  I used the threads list to guide me in choosing threads (but I didn't follow it completely). I have not used any of the stitch suggestions until now.  The guide suggests using detached buttonhole for the white foam.  I deviated from that slightly in that I used regular buttonhole (one ply of my white Splendor silk used for the sandy beach in the background mixed with one strand of white Accentuate #311) to stitch the foam lines from left to right.  In certain areas I added a tiny French knot where the foam needed to be thicker as it spilled over the top of an incoming wave.

I have to admit it was hard to keep the silk and Accentuate strands even in the needle.  This was slow going but I like the end result. It doesn't overwhelm the water and looks real to me.

The white Accentuate was a new thread so I added one more stash credit point to my tally which stands at 25 now.  It amazes me how many threads I use on a piece and how I rarely use up a thread from my stash.  I must mix a lot of small sections of each thread.  But as I am a threadaholic, I would expect no less.

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

For Margaret

I've been pestering all the Margarets who normally post comments here, trying to find the Margaret who asked about the tulips pillow on display next to the pet guardian angels at the ANG Auction.

I can't find the right Margaret!  So, Margaret, wherever you are, here is the best photo from the ANG Auction display of the tulip pillow next to the pet guardian angels.

Email me at chilly hollowat hot maildotcom and I'll send you the Auction chairman's email address to find out more if you need to.

And for the other Margarets (you know who you are) sorry to have bothered you!

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

Making Mistakes Isn't Fatal

I got two comments this week from folks who admitted they don't stitch painted canvases because they are afraid they will make a mistake and ruin them.

In answer to these comments, above is Exhibit A, also known as South Seas Fiji from Leigh Designs.

I added the water in long random zig zag stitches using three colors of Accentuate (baby blue has no color number, medium blue #67 and navy blue 138).  I also tent stitched the white beach and tree line back in the background using two plies of dark green Splendor silk #S907 and white Splendor S800.

I like how the white beach looks but did think about adding a few French knots to the green tree area to make it more tree-like.  I finally decided against it since the palm tree's fronds cover some of this area.  I don't want to take away from the palm tree which is the main element of the design, so no French knots for now.  I may change my mind and add them later once the palm tree is stitched and I have a better idea of whether a dimensional element in the tree line will make this canvas look better or not.  But if I had added the French knots and decided I didn't like them, I could have just pulled them out again.  I might have had to rip out the green tent stitches, too but that's no big deal.  I haven't stitched the palm tree fronds yet so I wouldn't disturb them and the sky isn't done either.

I'm testing a small Ming stitch in the sky using the same Thread Gatherer overdye that I used for the green areas on the right barkcloth side of the ornament.  Don't know if I like it yet.  I wanted something rounded like clouds but this may be too regular.  I had to see how it looked with the palm tree to make up my mind.  If I don't like it, it is very easy to simply rip out the single strand of silk.

I'm not sure about the water yet.  The stitch looks good (much better in person as it sparkles like the ocean on a sunny day) but I wonder if I shouldn't have used two plies of the baby blue Accentuate.  I may rip that out and use just one.  I only used one ply of the medium aqua and one of the navy.  Does the light blue water look too intense to you?  I hoped to convey depth and sunlight by varying the amount of Accentuate (one strand versus two) but I don't know if I succeeded.  I'll think about it today and perhaps I'll rip out tonight and perhaps I won't.  It certainly is no big deal to stitch something on a painted canvas and change your mind.

Of course I do a lot of test stitching threads and stitches before I put them on the canvas and I also work from the back forwards usually so that I don't have to rip out the foreground if I change my mind about the background, but it is durn hard to ruin a painted canvas.

The one exception is congress cloth.  If you stitch on congress cloth, you enlarge the very small holes.  So if you rip out you have to be a bit careful to make sure the larger holes aren't obvious.  I've known folks to just put an empty unthreaded needle through all the holes so that the ripped out ones don't look odd!  The moral is if you are worried about ruining a painted canvas, just don't stitch one painted on congress cloth.  Easy-peasy.

If I can do it, mess up, rip out and try again and still end up with a nice stitched design at the end, anyone can.  This is not astrophysics where a mathematical error puts your calculations off a million miles.

Just be brave and try.  You can always shout for help.  Your Internet friends will be able to suggest all sorts of things, and--as a very smart woman and dynamite stitcher told me--the more you rip out, the better a stitcher you will be.

Promise.

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

Jane Goes to the Beach

After last night's excitement waiting to hear how well the Pet Guardian Angels did at Auction (they raised $500 for ANG, thanks to the effort of the stitchers who brought them to life and to Kandace Merric, their incredible designer who designed and stitched two brand new angels herself), you can imagine I couldn't do any of the H-Q rows on my Glittering Kimono. I couldn't concentrate!

I did work on the beach area of the South Seas Fiji piece after I finished the last of the black tent stitches on the right side. The hard part was finding the right threads for the complex stitch I choose. The stitch is called Diagonal Wave and I found it on page 42 of Brenda Hart's "Favorite Stitches." I wanted a stitch that simulated the curved shapes you get when a wave comes onto the beach and then goes out again. This is a perfect choice.

Diagonal Wave is meant to be stitched in three different types of thread. I pulled out 7-8 different threads in the sandy color I wanted and tried a few in the margin of the canvas. My "try out" stitching where I auditioned threads is shown in the photo above. You can see the mistake I made in the first wide row, too. Auditioning stitches and threads makes good sense because you find out where you are likely to make mistakes, not just what stitches and threads work well in your current design!

What you see in the photo is two of the three rows that make up Diagonal Wave. (The third row in Diagonal Wave is tent stitches that follow the curve, which I didn't bother to stitch with those as I could already tell what would and would not work from my batch of possibilities.) The bottom wider row is done in Silk Lame Braid and the top narrower one in Impressions. I decided both threads were too heavy for the design. After all, the sandy beach is not supposed to overwhelm the palm tree. So I auditioned a second set of threads. They turned out to be perfect.

In this photo you see the beach half stitched. I used two plies of Dinky Dyes (a six ply silk from Australia--website below) in color #154 "Cottesloe" for the bulk of the beach.

http://www.dinkydyes.iinet.net.au/new_silk%20page.htm

The darker wet sand nearest the wave is stitched in two plies of Gloriana overdyed silk #107 "Honey Bronze."

http://www.glorianathreads.com/Silk_Floss.html

I tried to manipulate the Gloriana overdyed silk so that the darkest parts covered the darkest painted areas. In the photo above you see both the stitched right side and the original painted canvas on the unstitched left side. By the way, the third row of the Diagonal Wave stitch is tent stitches, using one ply of my Dinky Dyes silk mixed with two strands of thin metallic Accentuate #022 for this row. (And yes, I have updated my stash credit number on the left side of the page with my three new threads. I will be curious to see how high I can get the number before the end of the year.)

I am quite happy with how this stitched up. The beach isn't too heavy compared with the right side of the design and it won't overwhelm the central motif of the palm tree. I know because once the beach was finished, I stitched the trunk of the palm tree in stem stitch using a strand of Treasure Braid TR298 in the 12-strand size. There are a few long stitches to fill in and add highlights in Bijoux, which is a thin metallic a bit heavier than Accentuate. I used a bronze color. My spool doesn't have the number on it, so I can't tell you the precise color. The Bijoux doesn't show up well in the photo but in person it gives a lighter effect where the sun hits the trunk.

Here is the finished beach and palm tree. I need to do the background line of beach and trees, then I will think about stitching the water and waves, and probably end with the sky. Once all that is done, I can do the fronds of the palm tree which are on top of all the other stitching.

And I might do a few rows of H-Q on Glittering Kimono, too!

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