BREAKING NEWS: PFOS to Stay Open UPDATED

Someone announced on the ANG email list that Pocket Full of Stitches in Texas is going to stay open.  There were no details in the message but I assume this means the retiring owners have found a buyer for the shop.  Keep your fingers crossed!

UPDATE:  See Monica's comment below for the latest.  Thank you, Monica!

By the way, here is the Pocket Full of Stitches website.  If you are not familiar with the shop, you'll enjoy a browse.  It has many many happy customers!
http://www.pfos.com/

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

Stars: Beading Marilyn Monroe

Since my last posting, I have finished the parallelograms in Stitch Five, laid long slanting lines for Stitch Six, and built the bottom layer of the lattice-like Stitch Seven.  You can see all that in the above photo.

Stitch Six introduced a new thread:  black B2 which is Gold Rush 18 in color GD31C.  It's a woven chainette type metallic thread but the cut end of Gold Rush doesn't unravel the way many chain woven threads do.  It's a very nice thread that covers in long lines on 18 count well, but then it is Gold Rush EIGHTEEN.  Of course it is perfect for 18 count!  It introduces a lot of drama to the Marilyn Monroe block, doesn't it?

Stitch Seven's bottom layer is in the violet A2 which in my case is J.L. Walsh's silk-wool #1074.  This is a strand of soft silk and wool which is slightly variable in color which can be separated into 5 plies.  I used two of the plies for the foundation of Stitch Seven.  Some J. L. Walsh silk/wool blends are solid in color and some are overdyed.  1074 is the latter.

The middle step in Stitch Seven is to put what Tony calls Strap Cross on top of the latticework.  For this I am supposed to use a strand of violet A1 which is Impressions #6042, also a silk/wool blend.  I was a little skeptical that the Impressions called for in the instructions would work together without Impressions hiding the J. L. Walsh underneath it.  So I moved to Plan B.  I used 2 plies of my A3 thread (which is the violet Splendor silk floss in color S1086) instead.  Interestingly enough, this silk looks more blue when laid on top of the bluish violet J. L. Walsh silk than it does when laid on top of the terra cotta DMC floss it is paired with in the squares that surround the center star in this block.

The final step of Stitch Seven is to add accent stitches in black B1 which in my case is 2 plies of Soie Crystale black silk floss #0020.  When I completed the last of Stitch Seven, the design was officially finished but I thought the holes at the top and bottom of each center black cross leg were too prominent (probably because I lightened the thread for Stitch Seven) so I put beads in them.  In the above photo you can see half the block beaded and half not beaded, so you can compare the two looks.  I am using Mill Hill's Magnifica beads # 10120 which are a dark terra cotta color similar to the same color in the overdyed Silk N Colors that tops the center star of Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe is not quite finished.  Once I finish the beading, she will be and then I will turn my attention to the sashing blocks tomorrow and reveal what I have decided to do. there.  Once the sashing is done, I will only need to do the outside border on the top and can put Stars away for a little while.

While you wait, you will certainly want to visit the designer Laura Perin's blog to see her pink/green/lavender/apricot version of Stars, which is magnificent!  Laura has been working on this a while and is much further along than I am.  Ignore all her praise of me for talking her into picking this up again.  I just wanted to see her lovely colors develop!  I think this is my favorite colorways of all the Stars I have seen, so I can't take credit for selfishly wanting to see more.
http://two-handedstitcher.blogspot.com/2010/02/thanks-jane.html

If you are tired of watching Stars versions, then go see the Needle Works' blog to see wonderful photographs of an upcoming Tony Minieri piece, some spectacular finished stitching from customers, see the new store under construction and of course proof that it does occasionally snow in Texas!
http://theneedleworks.typepad.com/the_needle_works/2010/02/the-store-and-lots-more.html

In Blog news, I've adjusted all my titles' color to be deep black instead of charcoal and made the header title deep plum to help things be clearer.  I am also still rebuilding my blog list but still can't move it from the bottom of the page.  So I am reducing the number of blog entries on the first page to three so you don't have to scroll down past five entries to find it.  I hope all these little cosmetic changes help make Blog more readable for you, Dear Reader!

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

Stars: Continuing Marilyn Monroe

I have continued to work on the first quilt block star.  In the photo above, you see the completed purple corners that surround the central star I talked about last time, plus the copper wings in stitch five and the light terra cotta flanking patterns around the copper wings that makes up stitch six.  (By the way, the photo shows the copper wings as silver but they are a light copper color.)

The corner wings were tricky to stitch as each stitch's holes are covered by the previous stitch.  These were done in copper metallic Color D4 instead of D1 which is what Tony tells you to do.  My D1 thread is DMC metallic floss which gave me fits when I tried to lay it properly for this stitch so I switched to my D4 color (Kreinik 021 in #8 fine braid).  It looks good with the other colors and the Diagonal Fishtail Areas make a nice braided corner in Kreinik metallics.

The Parallelograms that make up the fifth stitch of the Marilyn Monroe block look easy. You stitch parallel lines that are crossed by horizontal lines sort of like the # symbol.  Then you put slanted lines / on top of the first two steps and follow up by three rows of backstitch.  Simple, right?  Well, no. I found the starting and stopping points of each step a little tricky to get right.  In fact, I'm going to have to remove the backstitches from my first pair of stitches as I started them too high and they don't reach to the bottom of the block as they should.  This step is done all in terra cotta C2, which is DMC cotton floss 758 for me.

Two more stitches remain to finish the stitch block once I finish stitch five.  After that, I need to make up my mind whether to add purple metallic to the sashing blocks (you can still vote your preference on this at the poll at the top of the page but do look carefully at the borders and my progress on the first block to see how the colors will look together) and pick up a new thread to stitch the third outer border at the top.  Currently only two of the three borders are stitched.   So I have a way to go before I finish all I intend to on Stars before starting a new small painted canvas.

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

Toronto Retreat for Stitchers

If you have been charmed by the Olympics' Canadian location, you might want to take a little jaunt to Toronto in late April to the stitching retreat that Gitta's is sponsoring.  There will be two classes offered, one of which is included with your registration, and you can buy the other class project if you like.  The retreat organizers have the latest updated information listed on their blog.
http://gittasgetaway.blogspot.com/

Gitta's shop is well-known for their charted silk gauze designs.  I have a gorgeous charted violets piece in my stash, waiting until I have a hankering for another tiny project.  If I could, I'd love to go since a dear friend is helping to organize the retreat.  I know how organized she is and what fun she is planning, so I hope you will consider a little trip to Toronto to see the best Canadian stitching has to offer!
http://gittas.com/

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

For Deepa, How To Needlepoint

Deepa posted a comment this week asking about how to learn to needlepoint.  I answered her in the Comments area, but I am reposting what I said there as a blog article for those who are curious about NP and want some help getting started.

Deepa, this is a topic worthy of a long article, but I'll point you towards the American Needlepoint Guild first. I think your embroidery skills are terrific, so what you need are some projects to get started with. ANG has many many Stitch of the Month things for you to play with. Go to this website which has diagrams of many many NP stitches. There are 11 stitches presented each year, then in December (usually, but the trend now is to present the outline in January and you fill it in throughout the year to reveal the project) there is a project using the stitches. I think this is a good place to start getting comfortable with new stitches.
http://www.needlepoint.org/Stitch.php

If you aren't Deepa and you need some stitching orientation, the best place to start is Needlepoint Now's tutorial.  It has six short articles on important things, plus two free projects, one easy and one intermediate.  The tips are good, too.
http://www.needlepointnow.com/online_classroom.html

ANG also has a Kid's & Beginner's section of easy projects, most with outlined designs you transfer to your needlepoint canvas.
http://www.needlepoint.org/Kids/index.php

Of course it is easy to show charted or outlined NP on the Internet, but I will be starting a brand new small painted canvas project later this week. How about I talk about how I go about it in more detail then? Until then, read what Janet Perry says about choosing threads and stitches for painted canvases here.  It's a reprinted article but should give you some general guidelines on how Janet works.
http://www.nuts-about-needlepoint.com/how-to-approach-a-hand-painted-canvas-needlepoint

I also wrote an article about how to choose threads and stitches for a painted canvas that is on the ANG website.  You can read it here.
http://www.needlepoint.org/FAQ/phobia.php

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