Blanton’s Bottle, Stitched

December 30, 2020, 5:25 pm
Filed under: ANG Main Line Stitchers Chapter, Blanton's Bottle

Kristen, one of my fellow cruisers who knew we’d purchased 4 bottles of Blanton’s, discovered that Rittenhouse Needlepoint sold the Blanton’s Bottle canvas and reminded me while we were on a shopping trip for threads in November 2019. I ordered it, it arrived in December as a Christmas gift to myself last year and it is appropriate that I finish it at Christmas time this year! Recently, we found a bottle of Blanton’s allowing us to save the last bottle from our May 2019 cruise.

I love the mesh bag that comes on the bottle and that influenced my decision on the background to select Chicken Wire from More Backgrounds for Needlepoint by June McNight. Her other book, Decorative Backgrounds for Needlepoint listed the 10 Commandments and the second one surprised me. A dark background brings the main design forward while a light background may melt into it. I held up a dark brown Floche and a light brown Floche next to the bottle and could see immediately that the darker one was better.

Initially, I tried 11/0 Mill Hill seed beads for the rider, horse, and rim but they were too big for basketweave and backstitching (stringing beads in a straight line) on 18 count canvas. So, I reached out to my chapter member Linda and found out that her resources and experience indicated that smaller 15/0 seed beads were better for basketweave.

As it happened, Michael’s only had Miyuki 11/0 in Delica black beads which are more tubular than the round seed beads. So, I bought them because I still wanted the black beads to be bigger than the rider and horse to mimic the actual bottle. And, I thought they would backstitch really well on the black rim which are completely straight rows.

You can see the difference in size and shape between 11/0 seed beads and 11/0 Delica beads in this photo. Four seed beads cover 1/4 inch and five Delica beads cover the same length.

The 11/0 Delica seed beads allowed me to contrast in size and basketweave with the smaller Miyuki 15/0 seed beads in a light bronze for the horse and rider.

Here’s the sizes of 3 different round seed beads 15/0 Miyuki (6 left), 14/0 Sundance (6 center), and 14/15 Sundance (6 right).

It’s not until you use more beads will you start to see a slight difference between the 15/0 (12 left) and 14/0 (12 right). So, when you have a larger area of basketweave, you’ll probably find 15/0 preferable.

No doubt that we will be ringing in the New Year with a wee bit of Blanton’s and toasting to my last finished piece of the year. Happy New Year everyone!