Wow, time sure does fly when you are having fun stitching with friends.

Today was our first class stitching the Poinsettia Lady from Maggie.  The original art to this piece is by Corrina Luyken.  You can visit her site here.  There are so many of these canvases I want to stitch.

The charm of these canvases for me is the face.  There is so much expression in so few lines.  I love bringing the face to life first.  Here’s the challenge, we need those black outlines to be there, but at the same time we need them to be much smaller than a single stitch.

Here’s the Watering Can Lady from several years ago.  If you want to see all the details of this mystery unfold, check out the links on our mystery class page. Click here.

I still love her.  She was so much fun to stitch even if there was a lot of brown for me 🙂

Her face and clothes are outlined in Stem Stitch using a single ply of embroidery floss.  That works, but for Poinsettia Lady I wanted her outlines to be smaller and more delicate.  I had to find an even thinner thread.  I used Au Ver a Soie 100/3.  This stuff is magic.  Ultimately it is silk sewing thread but wow. Smooth, yummy and just the right size for delicate outlines.  Magic!

We created the perfect hair for this girl thanks to the magic of bouclé.  If you’ve never stitched with bouclé, it really is magic.  It is a lumpy Brazilian embroidery thread that requires no effort to make it look great. Use a large needle so that you can thread it.  The large needle will open the canvas holes allowing the thread to pass through.  From there on, simply work irregular long stitches.  The thread will do all the work.

Now that our girl has personality, its time to start playing fashion designer and making her clothes.  Just a few details today.  More to follow in two weeks.