A Scallop Shell! (another day, another dive)

Timing can be amazing! Carol-Anne Conway, whose beautiful blog I've been reading for a very long time (Threads Across the Web) sent me an e-mail a few days ago about seeing a dark blue starfish when she was fortunate to dive on the Great Barrier Reef - so sent me a page of images of this wonderful creature, just when I needed something different for this new water drop.


These starfish are blues ranging from lapis lazuli to ultramarine to cobalt! What a wonderful color to have to add to a needlepoint coral reef!

The first photo is of the ornament with the waste canvas in place and the scallop shell almost finished. Another learning experience - just be sure, if you try it, that the canvas is dampened well, and pull out each thread separately - not two threads together as they are in the weave, but single threads. Using needle nose pliers, this is still a bit of a chore when using it on needlepoint canvas - but worth the effort.
This time, after the first fiasco using the wrong thread, I used DMC pearl cotton for the white, and Satin Floss for the ribbing - and it worked fairly well. I think I'll have to practice some more, and try out different threads in the future. There was another way I could have stitched the scallop shell, but didn't think of it until I was too far along - and too tired to start over. (time counts for something here).

Next - the beautiful blue starfish was added, using DMC pearl cotton in the raised spider web with five spokes - made with a beginning fly stitch.



















This time the coral is purple - with DMC Memory Thread. The buttonhole stitch sea weed (at least I think that's what it is) was made with Watercolours by Caron.


I added the jumble of coral on the bottom with the usual whatever I had on hand in the right color and texture - and the seaweed is made with Sea Grass from The Thread Gatherer, as are some of the little urchins and polyps lying on the sand.


The stitch used on the sea weed behind the shell is one I found on Pintangle, as Sharon B. is showing her collection of wonderful buttonhole stitches - these from her band sampler.

The section with the buttonhole stitches is from December 2005, and the combinations are amazing. I asked her where she found them, and she said she just made them up. I have been seeing sea weed and all kinds of things just looking at a few. It's worth a trip downunder on the internet to see and study them. She presents a new one quite often.


I'm a bit waterlogged in the head now from swimming in the coral reef - and have a NN dealine looming, so will drink tea, relax, and maybe "think" a little bit before resuming stitching. In plain words, I'm tired and burned out. Brain dead.