Noel

Trubey designed this ornament pillow years ago and for some reason it just didn't appeal to people.  Since Needle Nicely still has several in stock, I decided to add the "Noel" and stitch it all in glitz with pattern stitches.

 I dithered quite a bit about what background stitch I was going to use.  Lately I've been overly enamored of Nobuko and Diagonal Triple Parisian.  So, after some flipping through stitch books, I decided to do the woven stitch using Stardust by silk 'n ivory.  It has just enough sparkle to hold its own against the various colors of Balger metallic that I plan to use for the ornaments.  The canvas is 15 1/2" wide so that top row seems to go on forever!

 I think there are 17 ornaments  that I am going to dole them out to myself, stitching one a blog period.  That's so I won't wind up with gobs background left to stitch when I have no more fun design elements to do.  The first is a pink ornament stitched in the slanted gobelin outlined by diamonds of continental stitch.  Actually, I stitched the red first and then filled in the pink.  Much easier to stitch that way.

I'm still pondering what stitch I'm going to use for the ribbon, so for the next few weeks I will be concentrating on background and an ornament or three.