Melitastitches4fun's Blog


Swirling Leaves, Gold and Silver Swirls
June 16, 2021, 5:20 pm
Filed under: Swirling Leaves

Finally, this is the last post for Swirling Leaves (DH3825) an Elements canvas by Dream House Ventures Inc. Janet Perry (NAPA Needlepoint) wrote up a stitch guide during her online/cyber Stitch Guide class in 2015.

The gold threads for the swirls are Access Commodities Metallic Soft Twist Trim Cord which I first saw at the Edwardian Needle. I picked up a few packages of it to consider for this project. Well, years later, I realized that I didn’t get the correct silver and found they make it in gold too. So, I placed an order with Traditional Stitches, a store in Canada, it was on backorder, after it finally arrived I realized that I didn’t order enough gold and ordered more. Now, I am finally done!

To recap the whole project: Janet suggested stitching the background first so that the focal points are on top of the rest of the stitching. She suggested an open Tent Stitch pattern but I stitched it as Alternating Continental by mistake which took forever to stitch and covered the canvas completely. The blue bubbles were next which are also in the background and she recommended a couple of options that would serve to bump up the glitz from the Elegance used for the white background. I went with Silk Lame Braid Petite and a darker one where the bubbles overlap using basketweave as Janet recommended.

Since the green leaves are behind the red ones and cool colors like green recedes while the warm color, red, advances, Janet recommended related shapes in which a similar but a smaller stitch should be behind a larger stitch which were a smaller offset Mosaic for the green and a larger offset Scotch for the red.

Lastly, she recommended several techniques to permit the swirls to be the top focal point layer. Initially, I was going to couch both the gold and silver swirls with Access Commodities Metallic Soft Twist Trim Cords #20 in silver and #16 in gold. Well, the #20 trim turned out to be too large to insert into a #18 canvas hole. Since of the larger silver swirls lie underneath the leaves, I basketweaved them all in Kreinik #8.

This is the oldest painted canvas project that I’d started and not finished. That leaves Embracing Horses from March 2017. And, the two JP canvases Bird of Paradise & Bamboo and JP Orange Orchid & Bamboo from August 2017. I can’t believe that was 4 years ago! There are two other older projects including Stitches in Sterling by Nancy Cucci from October 2011 which is a counted project and Tar River Trail by Gail Stafford from August 2012 which is a landscape with a partially painted and line drawn canvas. What project will be next?


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