Embellishing Ornaments

The term "enhancement," when speaking of the painted canvas, means making it prettier by focusing on certain areas to make them more prominent and the piece more attractive. This is done by choices of textured stitches and different types of threads. When overdone, it's just a big mess.

"Embellishment," which I'm seeing a lot of these days, is the addition of things on top of the already stitched needlepoint. I've enjoyed for a lot of years using silk ribbon embroidery, as well as decorative embroidery stitches with other threads for special effects - a result of studying the art crazy quilts.

The first picture is an example - it's "raised closed herringbone" from Sharon B's TAST, week 31. (Pintangle) I've been following this, but haven't done many of them, as I didn't have any needlepoint backgrounds ready. Hers, as are the other fiber artists' are done on fabric - but I wanted to use them for needlepoint, as they are really quite interesting.

The red ornament is one I had stitched a while back in a phase of PPD when I needed to keep my hands busy - a great time to get these things ready and waiting! I found that when I really don't want to think, but need to keep my hands busy (when I have a good movie to watch), if I pull out one of my "traditional" ornament shapes, I can have a background ready in a short time for embellishment - which I can then do when something comes along I want to try out. Notice the needleblending which shades from light to dark red!

Anyway, I flunked this one badly, but it was good practice, and as it's on the surface, it will be a breeze to take off and start over. I like the effect of the Kreinik Holographic braid and a bit of ribbon, but I don't like the vertical - so next time will do it horizontally.

The red, green, and white ornament is one I did a while back with a TAST stitch called "cloud filling" - It seemed just right for using the DMC Memory Thread and Kreinik Holographic braid. Very effective!!

I received my Needlepoint Now today, and saw many many ornaments in these shapes that were hand painted and offered with stitch guides, but are no more than just bands of stitches horizontally placed - very colorful and very interesting, but one can so easily put that onto canvas oneself. Most of us have plenty of stash threads for experimenting.

The shamrock project was a result of my PPD after the Celadon finish, but I'm about tired of that now and over it, so will hopefully resume painting a bit tomorrow and find something more challenging to stitch. I'll do the icing embellishment later. This is the shamrock cookie tonight - waiting for Memory Thread decoration!!