Will There Be Enough Thread? - 10/26/17

October 26, 2017--This has happened or will happen to all stitchers.....you run out of thread and cannot find the exact dye lot.  Do you rip out the old color or try to camouflage the new.

In Elizabeth's Between The Threads Newsletter for Needlepoint Now News, she wrote about a wonderful hint from Brian Shaw, a needlepointer and manager of the Needlepointer Shop in Washington State.  He says....

"...if you are not sure how much thread is needed for a project, cut the skein or card of thread in half. Put one half aside. Using the other half to stitch, it will be easy to judge when you are halfway done with the project if you will have enough left to finish. If you see that you will need more, order right away and blend the half you had set aside with the new thread, so it won’t be obvious if the dye lots are different."

What a great idea this is, especially for projects requiring large amounts of one color, e.g., a background where a dye lot change would be highly visible.  Thanks Elizabeth and Brian.

Trimming The Tree Ornament - 12/3/17

December 3, 2017--Finished this project into an ornament in time for the ANG Delaware's Seashore Chapter annual Holiday Luncheon and Ornament Exchange tomorrow.  I stitched two--one for the exchange and one for my tree.  Here they are....

Trimming the Tree Ornament Finished

October 10, 2017--Completed the stitching of this ornament and for picture taking purposes, placed the cut-out oval on top of the canvas to confirm I've got the right shape.  Looks good.  Now to turn it into an ornament with beautiful cording around the edge.  

PS  The black edge along the oval top is caused by shadow, not a pencil.

Trimming the Tree Ornament Completed

September 26, 2017--I've shied away from finishing ornaments into oval shapes--didn't know how to draw a perfect oval template.  Well, no more.  I'm nearly finished stitching the "Trimming The Tree" ornament by Eula C. Malson published in the September, 2003 issue of Needle Pointers, and before I decide to fill in the background with something like the "T" stitch, I needed to pencil in the oval shape on the canvas.  Here's what I did.

I used Microsoft Word's shapes to draw an oval, then used an old bit of software called "Cool Ruler" to make it the length and width I needed to fit my ornament.

Cool Ruler used to measure how far to pull down the oval to the length desired

Cool Ruler used to measure how wide to pull the oval for the width desired

Once the oval shape was set, I used Word's shapes to draw straight horizontal and vertical lines through the middle and printed it out on standard 8.5" x 11" paper.  Then I placed my stitched ornament on top of the template, using the lines to help locate the exact center of top, bottom and sides, then drew my oval.

Lines on Template Visible Through Canvas for Centering

Here's a picture of my ornament with a perfectly shaped oval.  The top has more space than the bottom because a star will be stitched on top of the boxes after I fill in the background.