Trimming The Tree

It's that time of year when you can never have enough Christmas trees, right?!?

Last month I had an idea to create one more stitchable tree for this year's holiday offering, and I scrambled to get the model stitched and the pattern completed, so I could share it with you.  And VOILA! -- here it is -- my new holly jolly BARGELLO CHRISTMAS SQUARE:

Working on the festive four-way bargello pattern certainly put me in the holiday spirit early this year!  (And watching lots of Hallmark Christmas movies definitely kept my in the proper holiday mood - grin.)   Lots of reds and greens and LOTS OF SPARKLE are in this design - with plenty of shimmery metallics and beads sprinkled throughout the whole design.

The outer background area is stitched in a simple Four-Way Stitch, using 1 strand of variegated ThreadworX #8 1049, with tiny gold and green Upright Crosses placed on the intersections for a subtle shimmer.  Even the outer border has a festive feel, with tiny little trees marching along the borders, each topped with a gold seed bead: 

I stitched the whole bargello design first, leaving the center area for last.  I knew I wanted to create a small tree, but wasn't sure how much detail would fit.  I needn't have worried.  My tiny decorated tree fit the small space just fine!

Honestly, working on the central little tree was even more fun than I expected.  After first backstitching the tree outline, I placed red and gold ornaments inside; then, filled in the rest of the tree with random straight stitches in two shades of DMC #5 greens.  I decided to add some textured tinsel on the tiny tree, so I loosely strung gold tinsel lines with Kreinik #8 Braid, then couched the curved lines down with red and gold beads - and added a fat red bead for the tree topper.  Sweet!!

All in all, this new holiday design was a delight to stitch - nothing too difficult (except paying attention to counting the bargello rows correctly - always the biggest challenge in any counted canavaswork design, right?)... so if you would like to add another tree to your holiday line-up, please jingle on over to my website and check out the information on my new BARGELLO CHRISTMAS SQUARE.  And HAPPY STITCHING HOLIDAYS!!