A TADA moment

As luck would have it, I ran one skein short of DMC floss #503 to finish the English Rose canvas I'd taken on our recent trip.  But while we were away, I'd received a message from my LNS that some of my finishing was ready for pick-up.  So off I went this morning to collect my treasures!

Here's the finished Nellie's Imari pillow, a design by Judy Harper that I'd been working on for the last three years.  It's nestled in its new home, in the corner of our living room sofa.  Backed with navy blue velvet and a welted seam treatment in the same fabric, it has a zipper in the back for ease in cleaning. 

I was so excited, I just had to snap a photo right away!  I'll show more of the finishing I collected when I take some photos.

Drumroll, please....

Amazing!--I actually finished two projects in a week's time. But the most recent finish is a doozie and a long time in the making!

Yesterday I put in the final stitches on the Nellie's Imari canvas designed by Judy Harper. The finish came ten days shy of three years since I began the project. It usually doesn't take me that long to stitch a canvas, but other projects would take precedence and I'd put Nellie aside.

It's stitched entirely in Vineyard Silk Classic and Kreinik #12 tapestry braid #002V, and is destined to take pride of place on our living room sofa. I promise to show a photo when it's made into a pillow!

Checking off the colors

I kept a promise to myself and finished all the white background on the Nellie's Imari canvas--a major milestone!

Moving on to the fourth corner medallion, I finished the last area of navy and then filled it in with the red. I worked the leaves around the stylized flower with the pale peach, then switched to the bottom border and filled in the remaining areas needing that color. I also added the last little bits of gray thread. Four colors down, six still to go!

Thus inspired, I worked the diamond band under the vase. I'll finish outlining the red areas in the bottom border next--I just may see an end in sight for this project!

Plodding along

I've now finished the border on the left side of Nellie's Imari. For those of you who thought I'd be done with the whole piece by now, dream on! This is a mighty large canvas!

The next section I'll be working on--the white background on the bottom--is tricky. I have fairly long arms for someone my size, but the canvas is on 20-inch stretcher bars. If I turn the canvas 180 degrees to stitch the area between bottom center and the medallion in the bottom right corner, I can't reach that far. And I can't switch to a scroll frame to finish the piece because the margins aren't that big. Judy Harper stitched everything "in-hand" and could never understand why I bothered with stretcher bars.

So I'll muddle through somehow--I've promised myself to finish all the white background before delving into any more colored thread!

More progress on "Nellie"

Time sure flies when you're having fun!

Since my last post, I started work on another major project, under the radar screen, and have been painting canvases. My studio/office is in the basement, a great place to hide out when the humidity and temps start to rise. I usually stitch at the kitchen table, where the light is good and I can keep my eye on "the girls," our two little pooches. But when the heat rises, stitching with silk/wool blends creates a wicked case of sticky fingers.

So I switched over to work on Nellie's Imari, which uses Vineyard Silk Classic and Kreinik braid--a little easier for summer stitching. I need to stitch a fair amount of white before I can move on to another color, which sometimes means skipping around a bit to finish off a strand of colored thread. I decided to concentrate on one area at a time and have actually now finished the center section--a TADA moment!

I'll move next to the third border panel on the left--the white background is already done, so I can pop colors in and scratch that area off my to-do list.

Downtime

Last week was busy but productive: I signed off on the proof for the next issue of Needlepoint Now on Wednesday and submitted the copy and photos for the following issue on Thursday. The subjects for both pieces were original, and my brains were broken!--I needed some soothing stitching to help me decompress.

So I pulled out what probably is my favorite canvas of all time: Nellie's Imari by Judy Harper. The name of the piece is derived from a friend of Judy's mother who owned an antique Imari plate. The design area of the canvas is a whopping 16-1/2 by 16-1/2 inches on 18 ct. canvas. I began stitching it on Sept. 1, 2009, and at first spent quite a bit of time working on it. When my life became more complicated, I'd pick it up and put it down from time to time, last showing it here on the blog when it was about one-quarter finished. As of today, it's about two-thirds completed.

I'm stitching the piece exclusively in Vineyard Silk Classic and Kreinik #12 tapestry braid #002V--all in basketweave. Two and one-half of the side borders and almost all of the center square are finished--I keep adding a little more white background, then switch to another color for some variety. I'm getting close enough to see an end in sight, and would love to have it finished by Sept. 1 of this year. Time will tell!

In my "spare time"--Part II

I have to admit--I prefer stitching on 18-count canvas. My last project, the Kyrgyz pillow, was stitched on 13-count canvas because it more accurately recreated the look of the original fragment from which I adapted the design.

So now I'm reduced to stitching strictly at night only--I have a deadline. I'm painting like crazy for my next trunk show beginning June 6 at Thistle Needleworks in Glastonbury, CT.

So, to relieve my itch-to-stitch, I went back to work on my WIP--"Nellie"s Imari," a design by Judy Harper, which I realized I had last posted about almost three months ago. Then I had finished about one-quarter of the design; I'm now approximately two-thirds finished. It's stitched in Vineyard Silk Classic with hints of Kreinik #12 braid #002V.

The design is beautifully painted and stitching with the Vineyard Silk is a delight. I'd say it's too bad "work" gets in the way of my finishing this project, but I'd be telling a lie--work, for me, anyway, is too much fun!

In my "spare time"

Have you ever wished that you could train your toes to be more useful? I wish this often, particularly during busy spells like this one, when I'm painting my little heart out for an upcoming trunk show (Peacock Alley Needlepoint in Ada, Michigan, on March 21). It's impossible to design, stitch and paint canvases simultaneously. So I generally paint by day and stitch at night.

And on the extremely few occasions that I stitch an OP (Other Person's) canvas, I'm very picky. Not only must the subject matter really grab me, but also it must be extremely well-painted--after all, I'm a stitch painter myself. I started painting and marketing my own designs in the mid 90s because I was frustrated by how few well-painted canvases were available and which suited my taste.

Then last year, I saw a canvas and fell in love: with Judy Harper's "Nellie's Imari" (right photo). I love Oriental art, have a small collection of antique Imari porcelains inherited from my mother, and the navy blue sofa in my living room was crying out for a new pillow. "Nellie's Imari" is an on-going work in progress: I began stitching on September 1 and pick it up when I have a minute, or when I'm feeling really wicked and want to play hooky.

The first photo is actually a scan of the work in progress, and a crooked scan at that! But I found it extremely difficult to fit 20-inch-square stretcher bars inside my scanner! Except for the Kreinik #12 tapestry braid #002V, the piece is being worked in basketweave entirely in Vineyard Silk. This thread has a lovely hand to it and the sheen is wonderful. Unlike most of my models, which endure a lot of wear and tear as they traipse across the country for trunk shows, this pillow-in-the-making will be an heirloom passed down to future generations and thus worthy of the expense of this thread. Hopefully a future daughter-in-law (I should live so long!) will fall in love with the design, too, and claim it for her own.