A Favorite Star Returns

Over 15 years ago, I designed one of my first needlepoint quilt patterns, and it was called LONE STAR.  It looked like this:

I stitched it on the old tan canvas (didn't have eggshell in those days) with just one skein of Watercolours 018, "Peacock" and a handful of ecru #5 pearl cottons.  It's been very popular over the years, but recently I thought it would be fun to give it a bit of a facelift and bring the pattern up-to-date, adding a few more thread colors as well as creating an easier color graph to follow.
Here's the revamped version, which I'm calling NEW LONE STAR:

And it still uses that lovely Watercolours 018, "Peacock", but it also uses two blue pearl cottons and two brown pearl cottons... plus the same ecru background, but also a bit of metallic bling, with a royal blue Ribbon Floss for some accent stitches.

It was fun to get back to stitching a quilt, using fast and easy long, diagonal satin stitches and straight stitches.  This was a good "no-brainer" project for when you don't want anything hard to think about, or you want to just stitch and watch tv in the evenings, and not do any complex counting.  And I STILL love that blue & brown variation of Watercolours' "Peacock" -- it's a classic!

The other nice thing about this NEW LONE STAR is how easy it is to switch out the colors.  Just pick out your favorite variegated Watercolours thread, then choose two colors to match -- this uses two blues and two browns -- and grab a few skeins of a background color (I use ecru 95% of the time).

Can you see how it would look in fall colors?  Oranges and browns, maybe??  Or how 'bout a true Halloween version, using that great Watercolours 231, "Ethiopia" for rich golds, reds and purples?  And I can also see this done completely in REDS... how perfect would that be for a holiday pillow this year?

Anyway, if you'd like to have fun stitching my NEW LONE STAR, for an up-dated version of a popular design, please visit my website and get more of the stitching and ordering details.... and oh, yeah...have a happy, stitch-filled weekend!