Filed under: Butterfly Baskets
This is the third of the Butterfly Basket series & is a “Pinsations” original design & stitch selection. The pin is added to the piece so that the pin can be removed, worn, & replaced.
I don’t know what I used for the flowers or the background – but I won’t repeat that selection. The basket is Alternating Cashmere with Tent. I like the little extra variation in the shading from just the alternating cashmere in this basket. It is subtle but when threads are placed in opposite directions, the light does reflect differently. I used several shades of brown DMC floche to get the effect of depth to the basket.
Books used:
- Stitches To Go by Suzanne Howren and Beth Robertson.
Filed under: Butterfly Baskets
This is the second of the Butterfly Basket series & is a “Pinsations” original design & stitch selection. The pin is added to the piece so that the pin can be removed, worn, & replaced.
The flowers are Milanese Pinwheel. The basket is Perspective. The stem is Ray. As in the first basket, I like the shading. I used a light and a dark brown boucle to get the layered effect. The butterfly picks up the yellow & brown.
Books used:
- The Needlepoint Book by Jo Ippolito Christensen.
Filed under: Butterfly Baskets
This is from my Butterfly Basket series & is a “Pinsations” original design & stitch selection. The pin is added to the piece so that the pin can be removed, worn, & replaced.
The flowers are Daisy. The basket is Criss-Cross Hungarian. The stem is Whipped Stitch. I especially like the shading in this basket. I used a thread blending technique with several shades of brown DMC floche to get an effect of some depth to the basket.
Books used:
- Stitches To Go by Suzanne Howren and Beth Robertson.
- The Needlepoint Book by Jo Ippolito Christensen.
- from Elegant Stitches by Judith Baker Montano.
Filed under: Dogwood Festival
As the Cherry Blossom Festival winds down in Washington, the Dogwood Festivals further south are about to begin. So, I present ‘Dogwoods in Springtime’. And, please forgive me if dogwoods only have 4 petals. I looked for a flower that had 5 white petals but decided dogwood is close enough for me! I have a few rose bushes out back – that’s all. I like looking at flowers but don’t need to know their names to enjoy them at the annual Philadelphia Flower Show or for the occassional trek to Longwood Gardens. If someone knows the name of the flower, please leave a comment.
This another example of a “Pinsations” original design & stitch selection. The pin is added to the piece so that the pin can be removed, worn, & replaced. Although for this one, Mary Ann, a co-worker, asked me to use 2 of her pins in the same design. I asked her how she thought the 2 pins related to each other & she saw the cat sitting under a tree. For me, the challenge was the relative size of the one pin to the other. A flower wouldn’t be bigger than a cat! So, I placed the tree in the forefront so the flowers would appear larger. And, I put the cat on a grassy slope well behind the tree so that the cat would appear farther away (& smaller). If you remove the cat pin, a stitched cat sits underneath. And, if you remove the dogwood pin, enough other stitches flowers remain.
This isn’t a large piece – about 6″x8″. I used overdyed thread for sky & tree trunk & overdyed boucle for grass. I started stitching that back & forth horizontally from the bottom up & realized that I was getting a streaky look which wasn’t thrilling me. So, I stayed with the same stitch but switched to more of a clumping of the dark area together to get the effect of clouds on the grass.
Mary Ann was very happy with the piece. I do like the people I work with! I’ve worked with most of them for about 15 years.
Filed under: Fishbowl
I thought why hide your favorite jewelry in a box when you can wear it and display it! To accomplish this, I incorporate pins into my needlework designs & have named them, “Pinsations”. The pin is added to the piece so that the pin can be removed, worn, & replaced. And, without the pin, it still looks like a finished needlepoint piece.
In this piece, the frog pin is one I’ve had since I was a child & the legs move. It’s not a large piece, about 6″x6″, & sits in a holder just like a fishbowl. I had to keep this piece – I just love it.
I used a variety of threads including DMC floss, DMC Cotton Perle #5, Kreinik, & Snow. I can’t find a list of stitches used although I recognize a darning pattern for the little fish on the top (in the air). The plant life looks like whipped running stitch & featherstitch. The water looks like whipped running with DMC Cotton Perle white as the base stitch placed horizontally but shifting row by row always one thread to the right to create the slope for movement & Snow whipped through it to get the shimmer effect.
As with the crosses, this was made on 14 count vinyl canvas. The canvas is available from www.crafterspride.com (under Fabrics). I cut an identically shaped 2nd piece, stitched my name & date on it, placed poster board placed between the 2 pieces to be rigid enough to stand without framing, and tacked them together, with small stitches along all sides using a vinyl thread.
Filed under: Crosses
These crosses were made for a dear lady, Marty, who helped take care of my mother for several years and for my niece, Molly, for her First Holy Communion.
For these, I was playing with saturation (intensity) within a hue (color) (another learning applied from Mary Shipp). I added embellishment in the form of charm or pin. I used the Triangle stitch for center portion & a Plaited Gobelin from Stitches To Go by Suzanne Howren & Beth Robertson.
They were made into wall hangings on 14 count vinyl canvas with DMC Perle #5. The canvas is available from www.crafterspride.com (under Fabrics). I cut an identically shaped 2nd piece, stitched my name & date on it, placed poster board placed between the 2 pieces to be rigid enough to hang without framing, and tacked them together, with small stitches along all sides using a vinyl thread.
Filed under: Easter Eggs
There are a dozen eggs made using DMC floss and Mill Hill Beads on perforated paper (all purchased at AC Moore) for my Easter egg tree (from the Lillian Vernon catalogue years ago). These were done before any ANG classes. I used regular graph paper to chart out the designs (which I still have & found in my pile). The tricky part was cutting each small egg exactly the same so that I could sew them back to back after I was done. The front design did not match the back. Now that I think about it, perhaps I could have stitched the beads first on one side & then on the second side. It must be possible but that actually doesn’t sound easy either. I didn’t do a whole bunch with beads but managed to gather a stash of them!
Easter always meant Easter egg baskets as a kid. So, I switched the design entirely on this one. The eggs are my own design.
I used:
- square chain stitch for tree trunk
- whipped running stitch for tree branches
- cross stitch for eggs
- straight stitch for white background
- diamond ray for purple background
- 6-trip herringbone for outer border
Filed under: ANG Stitch of the Month, 2010
The project is coming along nicely. Glad I got March done before the end of the month!
Filed under: Sculptured Knot Garden
This garden has depth & variety that a larger garden (8” x 8”) can accommodate. There is even a water fountain. By adding some padding in several areas underneath stitches, I have added contour to the topography. Last year, one of our members offered suggestions for basic garden designs & stitches that work well in a garden. And, as you can image, no 2 were alike. I’m not a big French Knot fan but I worked some in along the inner border & used Raised & Palenstra Knots in order to call it a “Knot” Garden.
I had to place the finished piece inside a shadow box because I was afraid of dust. NOT that my friend & co-worker, Roya, who I gave it to as a gift upon completion, is a bad housekeeper!! We all get dust. Anyway, the shadowbox was quite an ordeal. When I realized the cardboard sides would show, I added straight stitches along the sides to cover them. Then, I had to tack down the piece to the cardboard so it would lay flat along the bottom – the fountain JUST fit – only slightly touching the glass. Once I had it fully attached to the cardboard & bent the sides fully, it puckered more than I had expected! Well, that just added a little more to the contour of the topography!
In this garden, I used the following stitches:
Outer border: Triangle
Inner North & South borders (top & bottom): Raised Knots with Colonial Knot centers
Inner East & West border (sides): Lazy Daisy, Straight Stitch, & French Knots (for simple flower design)
Large corner areas (listed in a clockwise manner starting at the NE corner or 1 pm):
- French Knot on a Stick
- Detached Buttonhole with a few layers of felt padding
- Web Stitch Wrapped with 2 rows of Rosette Stitch
- Milanese Pinwheel
North & South horseshoes: Turkey Work (I used a thread that expanded in volume beyond my expectation and covered the flowers of the inner portion of the horseshoe. Since I wasn’t going to rip it out, I had to cinch them together using a matching floss near the surface where it wouldn’t show. I learned that Turkey Work isn’t my favorite stitch & using floss would have been a better choice.)
East & West horseshoes: I don’t know if what I did has a name but necessity is the mother of invention & I sure didn’t want to do anymore Turkey Work. So, I took a chunk of a flexible cloth hair band & stitched up & over it using an overdyed bouclé.
Outer area between arms of horseshoes: Ringed Daisies
Inner area between arms of horseshoes: Raised Knots with Colonial Knot centers
Inner center area of horseshoes: Tied Windmills & Knots to fill in the spaces
Center portion: Jessica inside Walneto
Fountain: Needleweaving (over a stiff wire which had been bent in half & placed up through the canvas before stitching)
Ground covering: Not sure of the name of this stitch. If anyone recognizes, please let me know. Thanks in advance. Sharon (ANG Yahoo group member in St. Charles, MO) suggested T-stitch which I found in Stitches To Go by Suzanne Howren & Beth Robertson. But this stitch is longer. So, I flipped through that book again & found it. It’s called Woven. Thanks Sharon for getting me to the right book!!
Stitch books used:
- The Needlepoint Book by Jo Ippolito Christensen
- Stitches To Go by Suzanne Howren and Beth Robertson
- Stitch Sampler by Lucinda Ganderton
- Elegant Stitches by Judith Baker Montano
- Sculptured Needlepoint Stitchery by Ella Projansky
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