Monday, June 3, 2013

Dance For Me

I frequent my LNS as much as possible for canvases, but I have a little e*bay habit that I just can't kick.  As soon as I saw this adorable ballerina canvas I knew I had to have it.  My two year old niece fancies herself a dancer so I knew it would be the perfect 2013 ornament for her.  Plus I found that it's a discontinued canvas so I don't feel too bad buying it from a reseller.


Since I had so many leftover threads from the Santa canvas, I was able to stitch this entirely with stash threads. Yay!  Again, I tried to stick to the stitch guide as much as possible, not so much to maintain the integrity of the design, but more so I try out new stitches that I normally wouldn't do.

The stitch guide called for something called swirling bargello from Amy Bunger's cookbook for stitchers.  There was a small diagram in the stitch guide but it was hard for me to really get this stitch since it wasn't numbered.  I tried my best but I am sure it looks nothing at all like what it's supposed to.

For her dress, I followed the stitch guide to the letter, but I reversed the direction of the stitches to be mirror images as I figured that's how the pattern of the fabric would be.  I also had a little trouble compensating the skirt part of her dress (it was done in shifting cashmere), but as long as you don't look too closely, I think it looks fine.

The tricky part for me was the background.  Nothing was drawn on the canvas so I measured out what I thought would work.  Looking at it, it's a little big, but oh well.  I also ended up just tent stitching it instead of doing basket composite, as the guide called for.  I wanted to finish this one and wasn't in the mood to learn a new stitch. :-)

I have three more P&M ornaments I am going to stitch this summer and am excited to get started!  I really like them, though I will say, the diagrams in the stitch guide aren't that helpful for me as they aren't numbered.  When I'm learning a new stitch I find that I really rely on the numbering until I get the hang of how to do the stitch.