This was the weekend — the first Mellow Yellow Class! Melissa Shirley designed this great purse canvas that we unveiled at our trunkshow in April.

I am designing a stitch guide for it and teaching it sort of as a mystery class. Every few weeks we meet and I unveil the next section stitched.

First we tackled the background.

It’s unconventional to stitch the background first in needlepoint, but there are times it is a great solution. Our background pattern is a fun repeat of octagons. It’s a lot easier to count octagons throughout the background when you don’t have to work around previous stitches. We just stitched, counted across open areas and viola, the background began to come to life.

The pattern uses 3 threads to complete the stitch. First a metallic and then vineyard silk in beautiful Scotch Stitches followed by little accents of an overdye silk. All combined it makes for an elegant background reminiscent of a quilted Chanel bag — perfect for a girlie pink handbag and just what I wanted.

A fun time was had by all. Stayed tuned and in a few weeks there will be more to see!