Stitch With Me

I mentioned in my last post that I’m stitching a piece for the ANG Auction.

This is the piece I’m stitching.

I’m not sure who the designer is.  If anyone know, will you e-mail me so I can give proper credit?   On the lower left hand side of the canvas, are the initials, TTP with a silver needle being threaded with thread that comes off of the first T.

I started last week some time using threads from my stash.  I went to my LNS on Saturday because I didn’t have any thread that was the right blue/green or peach for the stripes  on Santa’s shirt.  I took my daughter with me.  She didn’t like the purple I’d picked out for the shirt and insisted, in that teenaged roll your eyes “can my mother be any stupider” sort of way, that I get three new colors for the shirt.

We bought more DMC perle cotton for the shirt and she also picked silver/gray colors for the hard hat.  I really prefer working with some of the silk-wool mixes but for this project,  the perle cotton seemed to have the largest selection of colors that we needed.

So I spent last Saturday evening watching a movie and pulling threads out because I had the shirt about 3/4 stitched.  I’m confident, if I really was intent on stitching it entirely from my stash, that I could have found some colors in my stash that would have worked.  But I hadn’t been to the LNS in awhile and I like to go there and look around.  And as long as I was there, I figured I might as well get the right threads.

This is a lovely piece.  I started on the hands.  There’s no real rhyme or reason for it, I just thought that was a good place to start.  Then I stitched the darker purple parts first; the part the designer used to define the arms from the body of the shirt.

Since I couldn’t figure out what kind of stitch to use on the shirt, because the spaces to be stitched were so small, I simply used the basketweave.  I turned the piece on its side and the stitches are going in one direction and then I turned the piece right side up and the basketweave stitces are like normal.  Does that make sense?

So, on this picture, the stitches are going in this direction \

And in this picture the are all going in this / direction

Does that make more sense?  It was the best I could do with such small spaces.

I tried to make the placket of the shirt look different.  But I don’t think I was very successful.

Those are long cross-stitches.  I think I may take them out and try something different.  It turned out to be a little more bumpy that I intended.  I wonder if I got a floss in the same color whether those long cross-stitches would work.  Something to think about.

I stitched the saddle in Rainbow Gallery’s Petite Very Velvet and the gold on the saddle and on the bottom of the rocking horse in Kreinik Braid.  I like stitching the Petite Very Velvet in the basketweave because it makes it look like on solid piece of soft kid leather.

I’ve not decided what else I”m going to do with this piece but whatever it is, it shouldn’t take very long.

Wow!  Two posts in the same month!  I’m on some kind of a roll.

Last week I finished the Basketball Santa I had custom painted for my daughter’s Basketball Coach.  That woman (the BB Coach) is some kind of saint because there is no one with more attitude than a 7th Grade girl (and it’s mostly bad attitude) and ye gods are they lazy!

Last year I did a Santa ornament for my friend Kirsten and her kids. I told the fabulous Gail Hendrix of Squiggee Designs that I was thinking about doing one like that for my daughter’s basketball coach and we talked via e-mail a bit and then she had it whipped out for me lickety-split.

Below is the front of the ornament,   The colors approximate the colors of the girl’s basketball uniforms.  I don’t think you can read it but on the basketball is the name of the school, the coach’s name and the year, 2007-2008.

Most of the front of the ornament was done in basketweave.  I stitched the basketball on the front in mosaic stitch using perle cotton, the regular way, i.e. all the stitches are going in the same direction.  The names were done in Kreink Braid.   The beard is done in a basketweave stitch only on the “sliding down the pole” stitches, I used a bamboo skewer to keep the loop long, and on the “walking up the steps” portion of the stitch I did regular basketweave.  You can’t cut this stitch because there isn’t really anything holding the long loops in except the regular basketweave stitches, so it’s important to keep the loops uniform.  I used Brown Paper Packages Trio in white to do the beard and the hair.  Santa’s hair I did using an alternative to the standard turkeywork technique that I used on the lion on Sophia’s Stocking.  You can’t really see it, but between the hair and the beard is a headband that matches the wrist bands on Santa’s wrist.  I did the mustache before I did the beard and the hair.  It’s in one of the fuzzy threads I had in my stash and I layed a layer of stitches one way and then another layer of stitches the other way so it would be padded.  I didn’t have enough to do the beard or the hair.  After I finished with the beard and hair, I started to cover the mustache with the white Trio but decided against it for fear I would pull some of the beard out in the process.  The beard and the hair used all but about 1 1/2 strands of the Trio.

On the back is the picture below.  I think it’s a great basketball!

I gave Gail all the girl’s names and she painted them on the basketball on the back.

The basketball is stitched in the mosaic stitch like the small one on the front but in each section of the basketball, the mosaic stitch goes in a different direction.  This technique turned out to be very frustrating for me and caused the project to slow almost to a halt.  It also caused the basketball to kind of pooch in the middle a bit.  The gold Krienike braid is very pretty but I think I should have used a different color and probably type of thread.  I used perle cotton for the orange, Vinyard Silk in black for the lines on the ball and black perle cotton on the black stitches around the basketball.

The orange around the Santa and the black around the basketball are rows I added for finishing.  I have gotten mixed reviews from different finishers about whether they do, or don’t, want any kind of finishing rows.  I guess the best rule of thumb on that sort of thing is to ask your finisher what they want.

I didn’t ask about this one I did for my brother, and I think it probably needed some finishing rows.

It looks to me like the finishing is right on top of my stitches and I’ve lost some of the effect of the stitching.  Oh well!  You live and learn and that was a learning experience.

My original goal for having the Basketball Santa Ornament finished was the end of February-first of March when the basketball season ended.  Real life interfered and then I said, “before the kids get out of school for the year.”  And now it’s “just get it done and to her before the NEXT basketball season starts!”

Next up is a piece I’m stitching for the ANG Auction.  It should be quick and easy!

I just realized today that I’d not posted any pictures of the Noah’s Ark Christmas Stocking I did for my niece!  The picture above is the best photo of the whole stocking I got.  I really need to take a photography class to learn how to take better pictures.

This picture I was trying to focus on the lion’s mane. This looks like Turkey Stitch or as I more commonly hear it called Turkey Work but really is the American Needlepoint Guild’s August Stitch of the Month: An alternative to the standard turkeywork technique by Kathy Fenchel.  I used a variety of threads for the mane; Burmilana mixed with Brown Paper Packages Trio thread and Vineyard Silk Tone on Tone silk threads.

When I started stitching, I did not realize how much thread this stitch was going to take.  And that’s really saying something because I ALWAYS over-buy threads for my projects.  See this picture on the right?  See that big arrow?  That was where I started.  I was using Burmilana, Trio and Vineyard Silk.  I didn’t keep any notes about how much I used on each of these.  It was a lot, really too much, but by the time I realized it was too much, I’d already gone too far to back out.  About three quarters of the way through that little portion of the mane, I realized I didn’t have enough thread.  I knew my LNS didn’t have any more because I’d bought all they had.   So, I had to improvise.

If you’ll notice in this picture, where the arrow is there is less of the Vineyard Silk.

And finally, in this third picture, where that arrow is, was the last of my Vinyard Silk.

For the most part, I think if I didn’t tell you about the problem with the thread, you’d think I planned it that way.

The yellow part of the mane is Burmilana and more Vineyard Silk Tone on Tone. The brown part of the man is Burmilana and Brown Page Packages Trio.

Santa’s beard was done using a bamboo skewer from my kitchen and Brown Paper Packages Silk and Ivory. I did a modified basketweave stitch. Sliding down the pole I did regular stitches and walking up the steps, I did the stitches over the bamboo skewer.

All in all, I was pleased with the results.  And my Brother and SIL seemed very happy with the stocking as well!

Oh I have neglected this blog far too long!  I’m sorry.  Real life has interferred again, or still.

But for something stitching related!

I just saw where Teresa Wenzler has a blog, Artistic License.  While I do mostly needlepoint now, I use to do a lot of cross-stitch.  I admired Teresa’s work enormously.  She does very detailed fantasy sorts of pieces that look almost like a painting when they are stitched.

Go check out Teresa’s blog and learn about her design process.

On Sunday I spent most of my day stitching modified turkey-work on the lion’s mane for my niece’s stocking.

I threw some beads on it and called it done.

Today I boxed it up and am sending it to the finisher for finishing before Christmas.

I tried to take pictures but I couldn’t figure out how to hang it up and get pictures and it doesn’t do very well when it’s laying on a flat surface.

Suffice it to say, it turned out lovely! Last night I stitched on my Daughter’s Cathy Dupree Snowman that has her school name on a pendant the snowman is holding. All I’ve got left on it is the background and then I can decide what to stitch next.