finished pieces

I promised I would post the two pieces I just finished stitching for A Collection of Designs so here they are:

They were fun to do and worked up really quickly, I started one night about 6 and finished the next night about 11. Don't worry, I didn't sit there the whole time stitching on these. Janet wanted the same colors used in both these pieces since they are a set. The circles on the candy cane were a challenge especially the gold ones. I used Kreinik 002v which is very stiff and had a hard time making the outline stitch lay very well. You can see that the green circles which were also Kreinik look better because it was a softer twist. Actually, the red Flair was my favorite for the circles because it did exactly what I wanted it to and looked good. I know some people don't like Flair but it's one of my favorite threads, it spreads out and covers the canvas for straight stitches but you can pull it tighter and it gets smaller for other stitches. I don't do any of the melting it that some people do, I cut it on the diagonal and just watch for any little threads to appear when the end starts to ravel and then cut it again. I also use a larger needle to open up the hole so the canvases doesn't tear up the thread as much.

Next project for Janet is to finish the very first one I started for her and then got stuck trying to find all the color of beads it needed. I'll post a picture when I'm done and you'll see what I mean. The first thing I saw when I looked at the canvas was beads for the letters, I got so hung up on it that I couldn't see beyond that even though I have had trouble finding beads. It would help if I could find my entire Sundance line but some how they have disappeared in the move. If the beads don't work, I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

Time to start packing for Seminar. I decided I didn't want to make the two hour commute every day so I'm staying in San Antonio part of the week and then will come home on Wednesday and go back for the rest of seminar.

Cindy