Bead Sprinkles for the Cookie

At this point, these Shamrocks look rather flat and uninteresting and I wonder what I'm doing. I think the idea of doing cookies began when I was looking for "Shamrocks," and images of plates of cookies with icing decoration popped up on my screen.

There was one that was a kind of medium dark green, and completely covered with what looked like solid sugar sprinkles with an outline of a lighter green line of icing. The best way, I decided, would be to do it with beads in my little "beaded solid but really isn't" technique.

This came about totally by accident about five years ago when I was doing plaids, and one day was weary of stitching weft. I decided to try doing the weft bands in beads, and to my astonishment, it looked like solid beading. The warp stripes had already been stitched - where I stitch vertical bands of color in basketweave, but using only the warp stitches, and leaving the weft stitches bare for horizontals. (You can see this "warp only" basketweave effect on the shamrock in the first photo).

The gingham heart is the piece I was working on when I found this new technique that has served me well for a long time and for many projects.

Another project in which I used this was the bracelet and earring phase. I have shown these before a long time ago, but dug them out to make a point.

I think I'm going on and on about what amounts to a designer's evolution of discovering methods and technique and useful "special effects" accidentally. Happy accidents!!

Back to the cookie! The next thing to consider was the kind of beads needed to do the "sprinkles." The first time I "saw" sprinkles was when I was designing four-way-bargello eggs a while back - a year or two back, and had embellished with beads. They suddenly looked like sugar sprinkles!

For this Shamrock, I knew that colored beads wouldn't look quite right, so resorted to my very favorite effect - the clear beads (Sundance #250 size 14) applied with the same color DMC floss as the background.

I used the plain ones rather than the hexagonal, as I wanted shine but not sparkle. There is a definite difference. The sparkle of the hex beads is more like ice.


The detail of the March Birthday CQ shows the plain clear beads attached with yellow floss and looking like water drops. "Ice" was on December. The bit of aquamarine jewelry you can see was made with aqua beads worked with basketweave as usual - it even works in very small spaces!

Now - back to the Shamrock, and the amazing change with just adding the beads! There is a strange looking diagonal effect which is due to the angle and the light I used - haste is the enemy of perfection. It doesn't look this way in real life, but just appears to be a solid coating of clear sugar sprinkles with green showing through. Amazing!!















In the detail, you can see clearly the effect of the diagonal tent stitch (basketweave) worked on every other row- which means it lands only on the warp stitches (the "bumps.")
Then the beads are inserted on the weft stitches, which are little dips. This way, the beads don't clump and wobble and look crowded and messy.

Also, in the case of using clear beads with colored floss on a painted canvas, by doing the warp stitches in color instead of beads, you get stronger color for the whole piece, whereas it would be too light and frosty looking (washed out) if no colored stitches were showing.

That's all for this evening. It's now time to go steal candy out of the basket by the front door in between rings of the doorbell. Little spooks and goblins are beginning to arrive!!

Moving Along with Shamrocks

Designers of painted needlepoint canvas have the year all turned around, as we have to plan ahead - waaaay ahead of the actual season. I think in the case of the Shamrocks, some of us are just tired of seeing pumpkins and witches over and over and over.

I don't do Halloween anyway except for a spot of candy corn now and then. I have no idea why I decided cookies would be a good idea - but here it is.

While I was working on two of these today, and my mind going faster and faster, I thought about the cookie cutter shapes I started using years ago to make ornaments instead of wasting time and materials as I worked out new techniques and stitches, and tried out new threads.

I had actual cookie cutters to trace around, and finally put them all into a booklet, which has now become an E-Book. I'm offering it at half price (on the side bar) as long as I'm on this shamrock cookie binge, as I thought some of you might enjoy trying these out for yourselves. It has a few additional shapes, like a mini-stocking, included also. ( I also have my "Paint Your Own Canvas" at half price on the Freebies Etc. blog this week.)

Anyway - back to the subject: The first photo shows getting started, and shows the beginning of the cookie dough border - the proper method of basketweave to keep it neat. The arrow points to where I stopped in order to continue the weft stitches in a straight line - and at the top as well.
This is shown as tutorials on both blogs with more detail.

The second picture shows the weft row completed, short one stitch. These two are actually moving along rapidly. Remember that green is a soothing and therapeutic color!!

I used diagonal cashmere on the first one, as I'm going to "decorate" it with icing.

It doesn't really have to look like icing, as it's just a cookie replica in needlepoint, after all, and I would rather have the time to play with embellishments - as I would a pastry tube if doing it in the kitchen for real.

Notice that I have outlined the icing shape first, as always, to confine the textured stitch, and to prevent ragged, unattractive edges.

The second one is really prettier than it looks here, as the light was bad at this time. I used a gorgeous "Holly" green Vineyard silk in Nobuko stitch, and the Petite Very Velvet dough is a cooler tan than I used on the light, yellowish green of the first one.

This is a small, kind of mindless piece, that is a relief from anything big and complicated, and I will enjoy playing with several, I think, to experiment with different effects. I put a pattern on Freebies that you can print out and trace onto canvas if you wish to try a few yourself.