Basketweaving with Beads

I'm still basketweaving Luna's gown, but I've added beads to the mix.  The lower part of her gown has beads scattered here and there.  I'll basketweave around them once I work my way down that far with my Impressions.

I'm using tiny size 15 round beads in black and also gray.  So far it is hard to see a difference in the color.  I'm hoping that will be clearer the more densely the beads are clustered together.  If not, I'll have to switch to using silver beads instead of gray.

I think the hem will be solid beads but I'm not sure yet.  My beading will has to hold out!

Thanks for the interesting comments about stitch guides yesterday, by the way. I never thought of a stitch guide as a time saver but of course it is.  You have your thread list to go shopping with, and the pathway of stitches set out for you.  All you have to do is find time to stitch.

Which might be the hardest part of this whole needlepointing thing, come to think about it....

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

Why Stitch Guides?

I've got a question for you today.  What do you want from a stitch guide?  Or do you see the point of using them?

I'm still tent stitching that amazing gown....

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

Madame X

The main reason I wanted to stitch one of Leigh's Ladies of the Night series is the challenge of working a piece with so much black on it.  How on earth do you stitch a piece with black hair against a black gown with a black cloak and black birds and not have it be a blot of black ink?  Of course Leigh Designs separates these areas through the use of gray and purple, but still....

I hope the use of texture will make the black areas separate.  I'm not sure you will be able to see the differences I put into the canvas except in person but I am going to try.

This is one source of inspiration--John Singer Sargent's Madame X portrait.  Isn't that gown amazing?!
http://www.themasterpiececards.com/famous-paintings-reviewed/bid/23543/Famous-Paintings-Madame-X

Before I forget, I updated the Chilly Hollow Stitch Guides blog with a short article on Bongo canvases which have guides available.
http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com/2010/10/bongo-does-stitch-guides.html

Jane, back to basketweaving that amazing gown and watching Sherlock on PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/sherlock/watch.html

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

Skin Tones and Plunging Necklines

BEFORE-Darker Neck and Face

I have pulled out the dark skin areas on Luna's face and neck and restitched them with a slightly lighter thread.  Above is the before photo and below is the after one.  Do you think the lighter shade (which is a tad darker than the shading on her arms) is a better choice?  Many thanks to everyone who chimed in with ideas on how to fix this, by the way.  Everyone agreed that the shading was too dark, so I hope I have fixed this.

AFTER-Lighter Tones

I've also started work on Luna's long black gown.  I need to do it before I work her fingers and ring and hair and I also think I should work it before I start work on her long sleeves and cloak she wears. Stitching order is determined in part by what's less important.  I like to do the receding parts first.  The cloak and sleeves are more prominent than the long gown, so I'm doing the gown first.  Luna's plain long gown will set off the more decorative elements of her jewelry and cloak because of the contrast between fancy and plain.

As you can see, I am basketweaving the gown.  I think Luna is wearing a plain black velvet long dress that clings to her curves.  I don't want anything to detract from the image of smoothness, so basketweave is the way to go.  I also need a thread that will look velvety when stitched.  It doesn't look like it but the stitching above is my third attempt to get this right.  You know from yesterday's posting how hard it is to get a black thread that, combined with other threads, still looks velvety black.  It is also hard to get the velvet effect, even from a solid black thread.

My first attempt was to use Petite Very Velvet.  It does give a very smooth, velvet look but I decided that even though I was using Petive Very Velvet which is sized for 18 count canvas, the look was too heavy.  I think PVV in basketweave is too prominent to work well with the things I have planned for the rest of the dress.  So out it came.  Then I tried Pure Palette's Empress, the wool/cashmere/silk blend I used for the tree branches.  In my test stitching, it looked very velvety but when I tried it in tent stitches, there was some variation in the black color and the stitches didn't look as velvety as I wanted. I think it gives a more velvet-soft look in long stitches.  So I ripped that out, too.  My third attempt was using black Impressions, which is the silk/wool blend from Caron.  It is perfect.  It looks like velvet, is solid black in the deep way real velvet is, and will look wonderful when I do the next step on the gown.

But first I have a LOT of basketweave in my future.  Luna's a tall girl!

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

Mixing and Matching Threads

Now that I have Luna's skin and face stitched (except for her hands), it is time to turn my attention to her figure.  The photo is the unstitched canvas cropped to show just Luna's figure.

My next task is to figure out what threads to use to stitch her and what order to do the stitching in.  As you know, I like to stitch the things that are in the background, then work forward.  That means I should start with her long gown, probably working from the bodice down to where it narrows and starts showing gray lines of the flare.  But what threads should I use?

I piled up all the colors I have that I'll need for her clothing and hair (black, gray and purple) and removed those that didn't look right together.  For example, a lovely skein of black Silk N Ivory revealed it had charcoal undertones when it was sitting next to all the solid blacks, so it goes back into the stash.  A spool of black Kreinik metallic had too much green sparkle in it so it was rejected, too.

This not particularly good photo shows that one of the grays at the bottom of the page looks slightly tan when put together with the other threads.  This is an essential step when choosing threads.  Color Magic happens when various threads are next to each other.  Some change colors like that gray skein did!

Once I discarded colors that wouldn't play nice with the others, I was left with a fairly good selection of blacks, some purples and quite a few grays.  The next step is choosing my stitches which will narrow down the thread selection further.  Some threads don't do long stitches well, some are going to be too fat for 18 count, etc.

Tomorrow I'll show you what I ended up with.

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