Beaded Pattern Couching

I should subtitle this blog entry something along the lines of "Robin Made Me Do It," except that implies I did something wrong, egged on by a partner in crime. But it is Robin's fault that I used beaded pattern couching on the mermaid's tail.   She emailed me suggesting it might be a great way to bead the tail on the mermaid just when I was pondering how to put beads there.

You see, Robin is doing a class for the Columbus TNNA trade show.  (Robin teaches and does stitch guides at Amy Bunger's shop, as well as producing Amy's DVD series.)  TNNA puts on classes for the shop owners who come to the show so that they have new and fun techniques to show their customers when they get back home.

Robin is teaching a Needle Deeva heart with fall flowers and a pumpkin canvas with beaded pattern couching on it.  Robin sent me this photo of the test she did for her heart.  Wouldn't it make great scales on a mermaid's tail?!

Here are the list of the TNNA classes for shop owners to browse.  You can see Robin's Needle Deeva heart on page 19.  Robin says there are maybe seven spots open in her class, by the way, just in case you are in the business and going to this trade show.
http://www.tnna.org/portals/1/tnna.website.files/Summer_10_show/10%20NAM%20BF%20EDUCATION.pdf

The photo of Robin's piece isn't great, but you can see a better photo in Amy Bunger's June newsletter, just out yesterday.  Click on the June newsletter link and the PDF file will open for you.
http://www.amybunger.com/current_enewsletters.html

Robin told me to check out the March/April 2010 edition of Needlepoint Now where beaded pattern couching is used by Brenda Hart for a large purple flower.  Unfortunately, the photos in the magazine don't tell you how lovely this must be in person.  Here's the back cover that shows Brenda Hart's project.
http://www.needlepointnow.com/back_issues/2010/2010_03/2010_03_back_cover.html

For those who don't subscribe, beaded pattern couching is easy.  First, you lay down long stitches with your base thread, then couch them down with a pair of beads.  Robin had suggested I try Flair and since I had some dark green Flair in my stash,  I was ready to try the technique.  The photo of the mermaid shows my pattern couching underway.  I first wondered how I was going to lay down straight lines on the horizontal for a curvy tail, but then the light bulb went on--I could do vertical rows!  And so I did.

Step two is to couch down the base thread (Flair in my case) with two beads.  I had some Toho size 11 lemon-lime colored beads in my stash and also some lovely gold Sundance beads, so I used those.  In most cases I used two lemon-lime beads but occasionally I used one gold and one lemon-lime bead for the pairs.  The mermaid's tail is covered in dark green and gold spots.  The dark green Flair shows between the beads as you skip a row in the couching, so that took care of the dark green spots.  All I had to do is occasionally toss in a gold bead and it looked a great deal like Melissa Shirley's painted canvas.

When it came to the fan tail, I had to use either a ray of stitches or curved stem stitches with my Flair, but once I laid down a stitch or two, it was easy to couch them with my beads.  Occasionally I just used one bead to fit the space of the tail.  I think for a first attempt it looks pretty good.  This is definitely easier if you have a regular square or rectangle to fill, but you can angle your beads a bit by sinking your sharp beading needle in places other than canvas holes to make curves if necessary.  This photo shows how it turned out.

As you can see, I also finished tent stitching the fish.  It has a stem stitch smile (in red Elegance I used for her bra straps) and a few peach colored beads here and there to add sparkle.

By the way, everyone loved Cowboy Day so much yesterday, that I used a design of someone you might run into in a Western saloon for today's Canvas of the Day (one of the Leigh Floozie series).  You can see the rest of the series at the Needle Works online newsletter on their website.  Just click on the link and enjoy.   If you love cowboy boot canvases, you should explore the Webstore which has plenty of them, the shop being in Austin, Texas and all.
http://www.theneedleworks.com/

As Pat said yesterday, YeeHAW!

[Jane rides off into the sunset, needlepoint clutched in one hand and reins in the other....]

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

Cowboy Day

I unilaterally declare Tuesday Cowboy Day!  The canvas of the day is a cute boot ornament from Quail Run Designs that is at auction on eBay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Quail-Run-Quail-mini-stocking-needlepoint-hp-18-ct-/190389924671?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c541fb33f#ht_1540wt_927

And the French Knot has posted photos of their Melissa Shirley cowboy boot monthly club all stitched up on their website.  The second link has details about the series.
http://www.thefrenchknot.com/models/texas_sw.html

http://www.thefrenchknot.com/npnowad.html

So swagger around today, imagining how great you would look in a pair of these needlepoint boots, partner!

(The Raymond Crawford canvas of the cowboy is from the same page of Southwestern designs that shows off the little boots.)

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

Before And After Border

To recap, here are before and after photos of the Melissa Shirley mermaid.  You can see that adding a border frames this little design.  If I were doing the entire series of her little seaside ornaments, I wouldn't do a border, but since I am only stitching one and it is to cover the pocket on a purse, a border helps fill the empty space and gives me a place for the initials of the Birthday Girl.

In this photo the fish has been stitched except for the pink dots and red smile.  I paired my peach Silk Lame Braid with a similar color in Impressions so that the fish is sparkling some places but not others.  I plan to add pink beads to the pink dots but not until later on.

Note that I stitched the area around the monogram in tent stitches using just the pink Impressions from the wave bargello border.  I thought about using the sparkly pink Silk Lame Braid in the right areas but decided that might be too distracting behind the letters.

I've also started the bra in this photo, using a few surface lines of the red silk perle Elegance.  I'm also testing hair stitches, doing a chain stitch in Kreinik's holographic gold.  I don't much like how it looks, though.  The sky behind the mermaid is all regular Kreinik.  I see that using two shiny threads don't allow the hair to stand out against the sky.  I'll be pulling out the gold holographic hair and digging around in my stash for another thread for the hair.

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

Putting a Small Canvas Into a Larger Space

Whenever I have a canvas that is too small for the place where it should go, I automatically think about adding a border -- or three!

This was the case with the little mermaid who needs to fill a larger space on the purse pocket.  I simply took the wave pattern from the painted blue-green sea behind her, turned it into a bargello wave pattern, and stitched the waves  beyond the sea into the empty space I needed to fill, except in a different color.  Presto! A border!

The bargello wave is very simple.  It is four threads high with a pattern of three stitches in a row, following by a stitch that goes up a thread, a stitch that goes up another thread, then a stitch that drops down a thread.  Repeat these two groups endlessly across the line.

My bargello wave is done in a beautiful Gloriana silk called Deep Blue Sea.  Because it is an upright stitch, I had to use six plies of my overdyed silk.  The highlighted waves (which don't match precisely the highlights Ms. Shirley painted but a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do) are in Silk Lame Braid #SL14.  I used the same blue Silk Lame Braid for the letter H in the monogram I put in the upper left corner of the border.

Once the sea waves were done, I did the border waves in solid pink Impressions #2075 (2 strands) alternating with Sparkle Rays in SR31.  Sparkle Rays is a flat ribbon-like thread with iridescent green and gold sparkles woven in with the flat pink thread color.  It is perfect for this piece even though it isn't the same pink as the Impressions because both pinks are in the mermaid's skin and features.  If you are adding a border, pick colors that already occur in the central part of the design and the border will look like it was created by the original designer, not you the stitcher.

I did some random rows in the pink Sparkle Rays to add bling and to help insure I had enough Impressions to do the entire background.  I had a little less than a full skein in my stash and I have to double it in my needle so I have to be cautious with the amount of Impressions I use or I'll run out.

The other two letters in the monogram are in threads I plan to use on the mermaid and her little goldfish but haven't stitched with yet. The green is Sparkle! Braid SK25, which is a thin, strong metallic about the size of #12 perle (I had to double it and do a cross stitch creating the letter R so it would look as thick as the other letters).  The peach and gold is Silk Lame Braid #SL29.  I'll use that on the goldfish later.

I need to finish the pink border next, bringing up my bargello waves to the letters, then doing basketweave around them.  After that I'll probably do the sky behind the mermaid all in tent stitches with a sparkling metallic blue if I have one in the right pale shade in my stash.  I want a lot of Bling in this piece but I think doing a sky in bargello wave as I originally planned is going to be a bit much, so basketweave it is.

Wish me luck finding the right blue in The Stash!

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

The Whimsey Mermaid

As I said yesterday, the Cape Cod Dogs purse turned out great.  My husband likes it so much that he wants a purse done for the granddaughter's birthday....which is in a month.  [a brief pause while Jane runs around her living room, screaming and pulling her hair]

So I picked up a purse from the local crafts emporium yesterday.  There's a pocket on the front, about the right size for a cell phone, that I will adorn with a NP canvas.

This canvas, in fact.  This is a mermaid from the Seaside Whimsey series by Melissa Shirley.  Luckily I had it in my stash already.  Here is the rest of the series.
http://melissashirleydesigns.com/gallery/?index=753&cat=66

The pocket on the purse is around four and a half to four and three-quarter inches square and the little mermaid herself is about three and a half inches square.  So I marked out the area I need to stitch beyond the mermaid to completely cover the pocket. That is the blue corner markings you see above.  Last night I stitched her skin and features except for her eyes.  I think I'll work on the background next.  After all, I only have about two weeks to complete this and get it on the purse and pop it in the mail.  [More screaming from CH, and a few swear words, too!]

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