It's Ornament-Making Time!

This weekend I'm going to the Marin Golden Threads EGA group to visit my stitching friends and teach one of my HOLIDAY ORNAMENTS, SERIES 1 designs. In preparation I've been finishing up my ornament models and this is how I've finished the first set:

As you can see, I've finished two of them as squares and turned two of them "on point". I was going to make my own twisted cable trim out of #5 pearl cottons, but found some ready-made trim at a local garage sale (I suspect it originally came from Costco) that matched perfectly, so I used that instead - how easy is that?

(And in case you're wondering... On the back of the ornaments, I've laced up the canvases over a cut piece of mat board and then hot-glued a piece of cut felt to cover the kaka mess underneath.)

And just because I wanted to see what the "shining star" design would look like in different colors, I stitched it up in fall colors (using a variegated thread I dyed myself):

It has a totally different look, doesn't it? (It reminds me of a harlequin fabric, for some reason.... ) And I found this gold braided trim sold by the yard at Joann's Fabrics. This particular design is very fun and fast to stitch up, so it didn't take any time at all to finish.

[DESIGNER ASIDE: I had so much fun finishing these ornaments, I decided to design another set of holiday ornaments for this year. Stay tuned as I reveal the next set of ornaments on my blog next week!!]

My Green & Purple Finish

Well, I've finished my green & purple "fun" project: the Happy Birthday sampler from Blackbird Designs.


I've made a few changes to the pattern (slightly changed the verse, shorted the overall length, moved the little houses at the bottom) as well as employed a few easy needlepoint stitches to complete the piece quickly, rather than working the whole design in cross stitches.

Here's a close-up so you can see what I've done:


Instead of cross-stitching the zig-zag border around the verse, I just used diagonal long stitches, then filled them in with little straight stitches in the variegated floss - so the border had a bit more color (well really, I just wanted an excuse to show off more of the yummy variegated colors of Waterlilies' "Hyacinth".).

You can also see what I did to my FAVORITE part - the thistle flowers. I just made them with diagonal long stitches, to give them a bit more puffy dimension and color.

And the rest of the piece was stitched with fast and easy half cross stitches - or a variation of the tent/continential stitch.

A Simple Little Border

I thought I'd talk a little bit about putting borders around your stitching projects. There are so many creative ways to finish off your hand-stitched pieces, that it always helps to have more options to consider than just matting.

Many years ago, when I was doing lots of cross-stitching, I came across a Danish stitching magazine called ARIADNE. Even though the whole magazine was in Danish, the designs were so beautiful, they didn't need much translation. I was particularly smitten by their botanical designs. They seemed much more sophisticated than our early American patterns; and that might be expected, since Scandanavian stitchers have been doing cross-stitch for many, many years.

What also struck me, as I poured over every issue I could get my hands on, was how simply they finished off their needlework pieces. It was a huge revelation to me! They simply added a stitched line around the central image. Look at the mushroom piece above. See how they stitched a cross-stitch border - skipping every other space - around the grouping. Doesn't it create a lovely, yet elegant border?

Here's another small but pleasing Danish piece:


Again, a simple cross-stitch border line in a neutral color works to set of the central design, and by creating a wide border of the same fabric, gives the piece the LOOK of a mat, but without the cost of actually cutting one to fit. The advantage of using this technique is two-fold: it saves you money, yes...but more importantly, it also creates a very calming border area that doesn't detract from the stitched center. As you look at the photos above, notice how well that white border space keeps your eye focused on the stitchery in the middle.

Here in America, we tend to do a LOT of matting - single, double, triple and even all sorts of custom-shaped matting. But as these two Danish pieces illustrate, sometimes LESS can definitely be more pleasing to the eye.

Stitchers, BEWARE!

Thank you, Blog Readers, for you kind comments about my newly-finished HOUSE AT CROW CORNERS. To answer your questions:

~ The whimsical painted canvas comes from Dream House Ventures (Vickie Hastings, designer). The finished size is approximately 7" by 8" on 18 ct. canvas.

~ As many of you may relate to, I was so focused on COMPLETING the piece, I didn't really give much thought to HOW I was going finish it once the stitching was done.

~ As Coni suggested, it certainly would make a cute stand-up project...if I wanted to do all that work. Nope. I decided to frame it - my usual fast and easy finishing technique. (I cut mat board to fit the piece, then lace it up in both directions using long pieces of #5 pearl cotton.)

[And here's My Secret Finishing Tip #1: Periodically, I check my local discount stores for frames. I especially look for square frames, but often times you can get good long narrow frames too...I ignore the image, the matting and the glass...and just look for interesting frames. If they're on sale because the glass is cracked, so much the better. I don't put my stitchery behind glass. Now I have quite a stash of frames, so I went looking for a dark frame to fit this house, and lo and behold, I had the perfect dark frame with bronze accents.]

(Okay, stitchers, are you sitting down?!? This is going to shock you, so BEWARE of what comes next!!...)

[My Secret Finishing Tip #2: Occasionally, when I don't want to stitch a background on a canvas, I'll color it with colored pencils. Yes, you heard right - I use colored pencils. I can hear your collective gasp out there....Yup. Colored. Pencils. Scribbled. Directly. On. The. Canvas. (Quick! Grab your smelling salts, ladies!)]

Here's my process: Sometimes, I'll color right up against the stitched image - like a santa, for instance - and then fade out to the borders. Yes, you have to be really careful not to brush up against the stitching. But once you get over the shock of coloring on the canvas, you get a little braver, and that's when I start overlaying different colors.

In the photo above, I used greens, oranges and golds, starting softly and then building up pressure and darkness around the outer edges. I was aiming for a spooky forest look, and I think it does look like an illustration in a storybook. You can smear the pencil colors with your fingers, or a bit of rag to soften/blur the colors. And then I went back over in bolder marks to increase the look of scratchy scribble lines. Above, you can just see some orange, gold, and green lines in the shadowy areas.

And yes, I do sort of hold my breath while doing this because I don't want to get carried away and end up with a muddy mess. But at some point, as I'm carefully scribbling away, I say to myself, " oh, well, in for a dime, in for a dollar" and just go to it. Worse case scenario: if I hate it, I can cut a close mat for it and cover most of it. (And, before you ask: I don't use any fixatives, but I don't rub my fingers all over it, either. And I don't expect these pieces to be sent to any museum or last for two hundred years, so I really don't worry about the wearability of this coloring process. These fun pieces are for my enjoyment only and I don't expect them to last forever....)

So there..... now you know some of my most PRIVATE and SHOCKING finishing secrets. Do with them what you will....if you are brave enough to give them a try....ha, ha, ha...

Just a Little Heart...

Recently, I was reading in Janet Perry's site (NUTS ABOUT NEEDLEPOINT) about her suggestions for different ways of finishing needlepoint projects. I found it particularly timely because I had just finished stitching up the sweet little canvaswork heart (a Barbara Richardson design in the Jan/Feb issue of Needlepoint Now magazine).

Although the magazine model was stitched all in winter whites & golds for a box top, I wanted to stitch it in variegated reds & pinks, so I went thru my stash of home-dyed threads and found a suitable colorway to stitch on pink canvas (just for fun). I envisioned a happy valentiney heart that I could make into a stuffed ornament, that I might hang on a doornob somewhere in the house.

The photo above shows how far I've gotten....I wasn't worrying about how it turned out - I just wanted to experiment with the stitches and threads. I improvised a bit, made a few boo-boos....but I just had fun with it. It's a fun project, with several areas of fun stitch patterns to play with. And I particularly enjoyed stitching the center row of hearts - each one in a different pattern.

Maybe I'll stitch a bit more around the hearts....maybe I won't...but I'm looking forward to turning it into an ornament that I can display all year round.