Needlepoint monogram on canvas tote

I stitched this 6” x 6" 14 mesh Barbara Bergsten canvas during a couple of television shows—HGTV, of course. I love this as a teaching piece because each stitch is stitch-painted so that once you put the first color in a square, the pattern is easy to see and follow. I used Vineyard Silk as recommended in the stitch guide and it covered very well. I have said in the past that I thought VS was too skimpy on 13 mesh, but it is perfect on 14 mesh. I will use this design for a class in our Florida store in November.

I was going to use this to tote Morgan & Gracie’s leashes and such around, but it’s way too nice. I guess they’ll just have to wait for something else to come along to replace their grocery bag.

Kelly Clark Needlepoint Project

Since finishing the Halloween March pillow, I’ve been fiddling with little projects, trying to find my next big exciting project.

One of the canvases I have stitched lately is the 1st in Kelly Clark’s 12 Days of Christmas ornaments. The baseball playoffs were on, and I needed (mentally) a fairly easy canvas. Kelly’s designs do much of the work, although you can glitz them up like crazy. My few special effects:

The outside border is Petite Very Velvet using a simple cross stitch over 2 X 2. It gives a very cool raised border

The inside border is done in Neon Rays and a very bright green Trebizond using the oblong cross stitch. I love the modern punch of color the green Trebizond adds.

That green is also used on the tips and edges of the tree leaves.
The pears are satin stitched with padding to within an inch of their lives using YLI Shimmer Blend Ribbon.

The partridge is done in random long and short stitch with a combination of Petite Peluche, Fuzzy Stuff and Wisper.

Only 11 more to go!

King Arthur continued

The base is a very subtle stitch I found in one of Brenda Hart’s books. It’s a lantern stitch turned sideways. I worked the lanterns in Flair and the background in 8 ply of Splendor.

I made up the sword handle stitch (who knows, though, someone may have invented it first). It’s a variation on the Fern Stitch with the center of the Snowflake stitch, surrounded by tent. The tent direction was reversed in the upper left and lower right quadrants. I used the Fern stitch again, this time with Fyre Werks for the light gray areas of the blade.

The gold medallions hanging from the twisted cord (Kreinik #16 and Perle Cotton 5) are an Octagonal Rhodes in 2 shades of Shimmer Blend Ribbon. After I made my twisted cord, I unraveled one end and carried each thread to the back and anchored it. I couched the cording down and unraveled the other end, again taking the tails to the back and anchoring them. It was time consuming and nerve-wracking, but gluing the tails under the cording is wrong on many counts.

As we all know, one is the loneliest number, two starts a collection and three or more means you are a collector. Time to choose my second large nutcracker!