Festival of Trees, I

Every year our local Children's Theater sponsors a "Festival of Trees" where businesses and individuals decorate Christmas trees and wreaths to be sold as a fund-raiser.  They have expanded this to include gingerbread buildings, homemade items such as jams and jellies, and events like breakfast with Santa.

Needle Nicely has participated for the last 8 or 9 years.  The first year all the NN employees started in March stitching "bulb" ornaments  in pattern stitches that we then finished flat.  That 4 1/2 ft tree was the first that sold that year for the full-price. Quite an achievement!  The next year we did a mix of needlepoint and glass ornaments.  One year I donated 3 of our Christmas stocking models.  The past 2 years I have been donating pillow models where the canvases are no longer available.  Here are two that are going to be part of this year's donation:

This was a canvas from Quail Run Designs.  What fun it was to stitch.  This model is about 20 years old and among the fibers used to stitch it is lystwist--a nice fiber to stitch with, but it never caught on.  The pillow has shirred boxing in red moire.

This Santa was designed by Trubey when she first started wholesaling her designs.  It was a kit, stitched primarily in medici yarn (sigh!).  The beard is stitched in the long/short split stitch.  The finishing is so elegant with the jumbo shirred cording with commercial cording in the "gutter".  The berries are beads.