Christmas March part 2

Last Friday at our reception for Sharon G, one of my customers said “Michele, doesn’t your Christmas March class start in two weeks?” Yikes! Nothing like a little time crunch to focus the mind.

So, on Sunday, with plenty of sports to watch on television, I buckled down and stitched the Christmas tree. I started with the beads, breaking “the rule” about stitching beads last. I wanted to place them when I could still where the artist had painted them and I didn’t want to refer back to a photocopy for placement. I used a combination of Mill Hill iridescent beads and Sundance size 14 beads, attaching them with my favorite beading thread, Prisms.

Taking two different skeins of Boucle’, one overdyed and one solid, I stitched the tree needles using a satin stitch. I cut the overdye into two parts, giving me one length of light green and one of medium green. I had thought about stitching the lighter areas as though they were snow-covered, but I didn’t like the idea of the snow from the tree blending into my snowgirl. I decided that the effect that I wanted was of a moonlit tree.

The ornaments were originally stitched as Smyrna crosses with Kreinik #12, but I thought they got lost in the foliage. I then stitched over the Smyrna crosses with YLI Ribbon Floss in the Shimmer Blend version and they popped right out. The star was stitched with the same Ribbon Floss—I stitched two vertical lines slanting inward and topped them with two horizontal lines to make the star shape.

And now, back to work—the next Giants playoff game starts at 7:30.