I thought I had discarded all of these things to avoid ever painting them again, but I found the entire file, unmarked, in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet waaaaay at the back. I'm actually rather glad to have them, as I'm on another angel binge, and making smaller ones that are much simpler. It's interesting to me, looking at what I was doing or not doing 13 or 14 years ago with threads and techniques. I wasn't stitching these myself, but had to bear in mind what other people who bought them might want to do. The diamonds are obvious, and were to be worked in whatever was available that sparkled.
The sweet peas are twining around the angel at the bottom and up the sides, and would be worked in simple basketweave to properly show the shading. Lots of gold metallic (Kreinik) was expected on this angel.
I really enjoyed "April" several years ago when I started doing the Birthday Crazy Quilts (you can see these by clicking on the label on the side bar), and had been using silk ribbon for a number of years already - quite a challenge working out the sweet peas!Also, I had been using beads for a very long time, so made the diamonds with Sundance beads - #250 hexagonals (size 14 for 18 mesh canvas) for the glitter.
It's August now, but I'm not yet ready to do the smaller, updated version. However, looking at the silk ribbon gladiolus (Sword Lilies), I've decided to do the new one with silk ribbon also. The original angel shows Poppies as the symbolic flower, but I was delighted to find the gladiola as a wonderful, colorful substitute, and my daughter, whose birthday is in August, agreed.
This gladiola project was a great collaboration in that I sent Jean at River Silks a picture of a few flowers - a gorgeous photo- and she matched the colors in silk for me, and sent me what I needed to make them come alive. I had to work these out for myself, as I couldn't find any in a book.
In looking at "September," I'm thinking she must have been one of the very first ones - I have a September daughter - because instead of painting asters across the bottom as I did the other angels and their flowers, this one is holding them. This is a difficult flower to paint any larger! 
It was a delightful project, however, in silk ribbon on the CQ birthday heart for this month. I'm not happy with the face - I hadn't yet worked out better features, and she has no ribbon in her hair. There are a multitude, however, of areas for using sparkling/shining/interesting threads to make her come to life and be beautiful! 
The October angel of long ago is showing what looks like Day Lilies - the only resource I had for this, besides what I had already known or assumed, was the Hallmark Store, as I painted these years before I had a computer for internet research.
To my delighted surprise, I found this time around, when I was doing the Birthday Crazy Quilts, that the Calendula is the October flower. Same kind of colors, and beautiful with the opals! Also much easier to render in silk ribbon!NOTE: If you aren't familiar with the beautiful River Silks silk ribbon, there is a link to it on my side bar under "Good Stuff" - it's worth taking time to see!
4 comments:
Judy, I'm so glad you found these. Talk about hidden treasures! They're all so very beautiful..
Lovely to see how the angels become a little more graceful as they go on, as though you'd relaxed a bit in designing them!
Yes - Although I loved Life Drawing in college, and did well with it, putting people onto needlepoint canvas is a different matter - I'm conscious as I draw (and visualize) how the stitching will go, so feel very inhibited. The faces get better too!!
Lovely, lovely! I adore all your ideas here, each piece is a work of art and the vibrant stitches on the hearts are so gorgeous-- especially the gladiolas. Beautiful work as usual.
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