Thursday, November 28, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving!




Happy Thanksgiving!



Remember when we used to STITCH fobs?  That was so before the bead craze!

Have you ever seen a 3 page Amy Bunger stitch guide???  I hadn't until I got my Halloween Candy apple...here's the icing on the apple...yes I'm still loving my Halloween stitching!



Enjoy the pies!  My only day to eat pecan pie....yum

Linda

Monday, November 25, 2013

A New Needlepoint Category

Christmas Train Wheels


There are so many categories for needlepoint....Christmas, Halloween, standups, ornaments, pillows and so on.  I have a new one.

The WHY DIDN'T I FINISH THIS WHEN I KNEW WHAT I WAS DOING?????  category.  It's almost that season again and this year I would really like to work on finishing my Raymond Crawford Christmas train.  Here is one of the wheels.  That's a smooth spider in the center.  Why oh why didn't I do the last 3 wheels when it was oh so easy and I had the same tension in my stitching???  I think it's been 2 years since I took this class and while I keep up pretty well while the class is going on, when I get to the last lesson and actually finishing...I am a disaster.

Here's a few more glimpses of parts of the train that look almost FOREIGN to me




I have to recreate the stitch in the tree for the wreaths in the windows of the third car :-(

And here are some bows....did I actually do that????





Enjoy Thanksgiving!

Linda

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Rings on Her Fingers


Hi everyone,

I don't know what happened to Thanksgiving this year, but it is all about Christmas around town.  I think Thanksgiving was about 6 weeks ago?  And I am still finishing up those last Halloween ornaments???

Here's number 5 of the 12 Days of Christmas and the edges of two of those rings required making cording and pulling it through and anchoring it so it didn't show through the open purple background.

First you make the cording and then thread a 6 inch piece of kreinik through the loop



take the cut ends and put those through the needle (a bigger one than the canvas calls for)



Use your laying tool to enlarge the holes that you will come up and down in with the cording



pull it through and whip stitch it on the back


EASY PEASY

And here are two more Golden Crackers finished







One thing about the Golden Crackers - I now have a GREAT stash of gold thread and beads!

See you soon,

Linda

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Gray Clouds



Hi everyone,

I'm on the last panel of my Halloween cone and I have to do something with the gray cloud next to the moon.  Don't you love Frank?  He looks like a rapper.

I wanted to use gathered Frosty Rays but I didn't have the right color.

Had this, but it was too light



And then I found this in my thread stash



So I started tubing the two together (this is tip #2 from class last weekend).  The Frosty Rays is a nylon tubed thread perfect for inserting other colors.  Here I threaded up the Silk Lame Braid and threaded it through the Frosty Rays to the other end, making it a deeper gray color






Now I can gather it up and make the cloud the right color



Enjoy your weekend.  THANK A VETERAN!

Linda

Monday, November 4, 2013

Susan Portra Takes On Jurassic Park

Ally about to eat Lisa's Texas magnet



Hi everyone,

Here's my canvas from last weekend's Bring your Canvas to Life class with Susan Portra at Needlepoint in Paradise in Naples.  All around me were beautiful flowers, Christmas stockings and standups, The Thanksgiving March and the Christmas March.   What did I have??  You guessed it...a Florida Gator.  That's what happens when you let your husband pick out the canvas :)  Yes those are real pearl teeth!

I learned oh so many tips from class so here is one.  Do you ever make a huge mess of your floss when you pull on it?   Here's the tip

With Anchor Floss




first you push the tabs together


Then pull the thread from the TOP




With DMC floss, push the tabs together as before




and pull from the BOTTOM




She also showed us a super cool way to make a realistic Christmas tree, but I need to try it out first.  You use looped turkey work as the layers of the tree. (I learned that from watching her teach the Christmas March).

Me...I learned how to make water move!  I'll clean up "Ally" and get some stitches to show you next time.

Have a great week!


Linda