A customized clown

My little "Rainbow Clown" design got a make-over last night to make it more suitable as a gift for a new baby girl!

I've also pulled threads for this project--a light pink for the background, with two darker shades of pink, two shades of turquoise, a lavender and an apple green.

What did I use as inspiration for these colors? The Neiman Marcus home furnishings spring collection!

I'll be able to work on the background tonight while watching the Olympic medal winners in figure skating and ice dancing.

Tenu Filo Magnum Texitur Opus

For those of you uninitiated into the mysteries of Latin, the above phrase translates as "Of so fine a thread, a great handiwork is woven." It's also the motto of the DMC Corporation, whose history and contribution to stitchers throughout the last two centuries are chronicled in the latest post to the company's blog--www.dmc-threads.com. Makes for a terrific read and the photos are great, too--do go check it out!

It's a girl!

I got the word just yesterday from my next-door neighbor: her second grandchild, due in June, is a girl! I had stitched a "First Noel" mini-sock for the first granddaughter two years ago and looked forward to another baby canvas. But I'd waited, knowing the mother-to-be was big on gender-specific colors. I now have my mandate: this project is going to be big on pink!

I'll be painting my "Rainbow Clown" canvas (left) to make it more feminine and to personalize it with the baby's initials in the balls the clown is juggling and "2010" at the bottom. Hopefully I'll get the canvas painted tonight so I can show a modified version tomorrow!

Back to painting for my next trunk show!

Another floral finale

With the addition of the floral elements, the tulip egg by Lee is finally completed!

The little blue flowers--which I chose to think of as forget-me-nots, since I have a profusion of them in my perennial garden--were worked in a Smyrna cross variation with DMC floss #826. The centers were stitched in straight Smyrna crosses with DMC floss #445.

In stitching the tulip itself, I didn't want to lose the beautiful shading of the original canvas but I also wanted to add a little dimension by accentuating some of the petals. I used four shades of a pink DMC family, starting with the lightest and next-darkest shades in tent stitch. I then added the next-lightest and darkest shades in a satin stitch to give some prominence to the petals.

I have plenty of time to get these little eggs finished as an Easter gift to a friend. As I return to painting penguins, I'll contemplate my next project!

Slow going!

I feel a bit like I'm running in place with this Lee canvas, but I have managed to finish the leaves since my last post.

Like the pansy egg, companion to this canvas, I've stitched the leaves in two shades of green Petite Very Velvet. I love the look, and the texture the PVV gives, while perhaps not noticeable in this photo, is just wonderful.

Back to painting penguins! But if I'm a very good girl, I might be able to start working on the flowers for this canvas tonight!

Olympic stitching

For some time now, my days have been consumed with canvas painting. So my downtime for stitching comes only at night and time for designing something new has come not at all! I do get a bit distracted by ice skating and ice dancing in the winter Olympics, so I needed a stitching project that didn't require a whole lot of concentration on my part.

I chose another Lee egg from my stash to work on--a companion to the little pansy egg. So far only the background has been worked, in DMC cotton floss #369 in basketweave.

Not much to report, but it's a start!

Rx for "pain" in painted canvas

I'll never forget the day when my oldest son came home from school with his first long-term class assignment. His eyes were glazed, his face was ashen, and his palms were sweaty: in six weeks, his full-blown report on the Boston Tea Party was due!

I calmly suggested he approach this report as if he were eating a hamburger: if he took small bites and chewed slowly, he wouldn't choke. One bite each for research, notecards, bibliography, and outline, with the final mouthful writing the report itself.

What do writing reports and eating hamburgers have to do with needlepoint? A lot! I've seen the same glazed look on the faces of many newcomers to needlepoint, who've fallen in love with a painted canvas, plunked down their hard-earned money to purchase it, and then wondered what the heck they should do next. My advice? Keep it simple--both in threads and stitches selected--and break the stitching down into piece-parts to keep from choking!

The canvas I selected from my stash to illustrate my point is a Lee egg, a pretty design that has two important things going for it: it's small, so it won't take a millenium to finish it, and it's stitch-painted, so you won't spend more time wondering where one color begins and the next ends than you do in actual stitching. In the first photo, I've chosen DMC cotton floss to basketweave the background.

Flash forward to the second photo, where I pulled two shades of Petite Very Velvet from my stash to work the stems and leaves. The PVV provides a higher profile against the background and also offers contrasting texture. For the "faces" of the pansies, I again used DMC floss, in tent stitches and a Smyrna cross variation in the center.

The last photo shows the completed egg, with the petals of the pansies worked in DMC floss in a satin stitch, turning the canvas a quarter-turn as needed to stitch the petals in the direction in which they're growing.

A complicated canvas? No. Fancy threads? Not really. And except for keeping the satin stitches as smooth as possible, the stitching involved plain old tent stitches and basketweave. The value of a pleasing finished canvas, accomplished in a relatively short time without undue strain on the budget, and with a sense of accomplishment that makes you want to stitch another one? Priceless!