Green Teardrop

This one's got quite a story. I was inspired by the DIY Ornament Contest and, being a crafter, this meant actually making the ornament. I took the provided template and imported it into my stitching software (PatternMaker) to create the (black) outline shown in the picture, then let my imagination run wild with the interior.

I love the color green, especially the rich tones that seem to come with the holiday season. I do not like gold, however, and it seems that green is mostly paired with gold in holiday decorations. So, I decided to do something in green and silver, my preferred metallic. I also wanted something with a "snowy" feel...I love snow and snowflakes and winter in general! So I designed a 4-point snowflake (because six is hard to do on a square grid and eight looked too crowded). I decided too that I wanted incorporate a color gradient, mostly for practice in shading with floss. I wanted to keep this ornament small, as I love small, delicate decorations, and the only way to do so and keep the level of detail I desired was to stitch at a very high stitch count.

This ornament was stitched one-over-one with DMC floss and Kreinik blending filament on 28-count Charles Craft antique white Monaco. For the non-stitchers, that means that there are 28 little stitches to the inch. Stitches consist of cross stitches (all full-cross, no half here!), a modified Algerian Eye in the center, backstitch for the detail at the top, and tiny little French Knots "tying" the top details. I needed a 10x magnifier to make the French Knots, and they really are too small to be seen, but knowing they are there makes a difference to me. Actual stitched area is 1.875" wide by 2.5" tall; I scanned a tape measure under the project to give a visual reference of scale. Total stitching time was 16.75 hours, beginning December 16th and ending December 20th, 2007.

As a side note, I really hate using those little plastic needlework hoops, but they are the only way to work on items this small without wasting the fabric needed for my larger (better) frames. C'est la vie, I guess.

I still need to do the finishing work to make this into an actual ornament. There will be a silver decoration mounted in the center of the Algerian Eye (either beading or bullion stitch, I haven't decided). Then the whole thing comes out of the hoop for cleaning, blocking and final finishing, the ultimate method of which I have not yet decided on. The finished project will be posted when it is, well, finished.

The kicker to the whole thing is that I mis-read the contest guidelines...I read the deadline as being Thursday night, not Wednesday night. So, I missed the deadline because I had a stupid moment. That's ok though, because this project gave me the push I needed to finally try petite stitching, and while it is not something I will do very often, I really enjoyed it. Plus, it gives me more time to do the actual finishing work, since I am still on the fence about how I want to proceed.