Friday, May 8, 2015

Finishing Friday: What Shops Go Through

I know a lot of folks don't understand why they need a shop to help them with finishing. Why not cut out the middleman and go to a finisher directly?  I think Mary Agnes explains how finishers and shops work together for the benefit of us stitchers very nicely.
http://needlenicely.blogspot.com/2015/04/fabric-for-pillow-finishing.html

Uh, MA, can I come play with your piles of fabric?

Signed, 
Jane
lusting after all the pretty backing material here in CH

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright April 23, 2015 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.

No Flying Monkeys: What's in YOUR Background?

The No Flying Monkeys canvas is a tabula rasa when it comes to the background, isn't it?  The feet are up in the air unsupported, while the lettering floats above.  This means we can do anything we want as long as the stitch is small scale enough that compensation around the letters isn't hard.  Check out what Mary Waldsmith did for her penguins stocking.  I'm going to do something similar, but what?
http://owlstitchery.blogspot.com/2015/04/adding-background-to-painted-canvas.html

I started to think about what the witch's feet were resting on.  Two possibilities came to mind.  Her legs were propped up on a footstool or her heels rest on a railing or chair rail.  Hummmm....

A chair rail could be broad enough for me to create a decorative band with flying monkeys across it....

Or I could put flying monkeys on a footstool.  The footstool has the added advantage of creating two background areas--one under the legs and one on the wall where the lettering is.  I could do something fancy and larger scale on the footstool and then work a smaller scale pattern on the "wall" around the letters.

I had not put my canvas on stretcher bars yet, so I used one of my stretcher bars to take photos of my canvas showing several positions for a dividing line on the canvas.  Here they are--





















The higher bar on the left is where I thought heels would rest on a chair rail on a wall while the lower bar on the right is where I thought the edge of a footstool would be.  I think a footstool space looks better.  But then I consulted a stitching friend who thought the footstool looks better lower down, nearer her calves.  Like this--




Hope you can see this.  I think it is better, although I will put the footstool area up a bit higher, but not as high as in the other two photographs.  Now all I need are two stitches for the two background areas-- one for the footstool and one for the wall, both of which have to look ok with the stripes on the stockings.

Any ideas?

Remember, I am collecting the links as I blog stitch this Point of It All Designs piece and posting them in a tab on the CH Stitch Guides blog.  You can catch up on what you missed by going there--just click on the flying carpet photo to magically be transported to my other blog and then back again.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright April 19, 2015 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.