Erica; 109; Christmas Tree

Everybody has those boxes of Christmas decorations that they put away every year. And. Every ad just before Christmas say open the box. And discover all the things that they've saved café since childhood. It's so exciting. These belong to my friend Emma day. And there's also lots of lovely little things in here. But. The peacock. A golden. Christmas tree. Here's a one of those cookies I'm really surprised that these things haven't been. Saved them all this time. But I thought that that would be such a good idea. You could just make yourself a cruel Christmas tree and put it away. Bring it out each year and it might even become an heirloom. Who knows your grandchildren might still be treasuring it. Afterwards. I did it on one of those little cones that you can find almost anywhere made of styrofoam.

You just have to roll it up in a piece of paper to make it happen. Quite simple of cut out the paper and then take a magic marker and go round it marking the lines of those ribbons that I put in my tree. Then when you've got your pattern it laid down on a piece of linen and get it straight by creasing it in the middle like this. Increasing your material in half. Make a hard crease in it so that when you open it up you can see exactly where to put off your tree. There it is. Trace all the way around it. With one of those stealth marking pans. And Mark where those ribbons. Appear on the sides.

Then take a pen. And tie a piece of BOA string around the pen. And then you can play that. Hold it at the apex. And. Just. Make. Semicircles. Working from your remarks that you put. Where the ribbon came and you get a perfect pattern. If you allow and should wait for a little you don't really have to worry because you're going to cover over the entire linen with stitching. The next thing you have to do is to mark your leaves. And be quite free. Perhaps the best way to mark them is to make a group. Radiating from the center like this. And then fill it with more in between. You could

even put a few. Star lines like that and then draw all the leaves around it. That might help. To keep you. Still in the top. They really are supposed to look like pine needle leaves. So just fill in the whole space. At random. Two little ones in the cooler. Well now your pattern is already. And the next thing you have to do is put it on the frame. And I decided the best way to show you how to do it would be to enlarge the whole thing in big scales. So I put it on this rag frame. And used a great big rug to do it. The first thing you must do is to make your ribbons. The bands of stitching that go between the leaves and break up the dark

areas. Come up one side and go down the other. And. Radiate just itches. So that you get. All of the angles of the ribbon. Radiating from this central point. That's why I'm putting these stitches a little wider apart so that you've got a skeleton and you can fill in between. Now I can come back. And put it in those other stitches. Now this really eat wool. So in order to be economical and also to keep the stitches nice and flat. Go down. And come up. Very close to where you just went in right beside it. That gives you. Practically nothing wasted on the reverse side you see there are nothing but tiny little stitches here. Amongst the shaggy

stitches that I've been working with my green leaves. Should never look at the wrong side of my work it's never too tidy. But anyway it. Just filled in like that and off by taking two little tiny stitches which just disappear covered. As you do the other stitches on top. When you finish doing all the ribbon. You're ready to do the leaves. And do remember to bring the ribbon quite fully over the leaf lines as I said because then you know leaves really right over the ribbons and overlaps them so you don't get a dime. Now you're really going to create a painting. It's just like painting with will also you need lots of lovely colors to work with. I tied all of these together. So in the furor of that tippity you can rip out these threads and just work with them very easily without having to know

them. And I chose about five greens. Three dark ones. Very close in color and two lighter ones to highlight them then the white frosty color of the ribbon and all kinds of brilliant colors so that they will rarely come out on top of the dark green leaves. You see how. The decoration. Gets beautifully silhouetted by the green leaves. So the next thing to do is to fill in your leaves and stuff right in the center with the sand then you do a stitch is. Making a skeleton. In other words. Make. Pine needles. Separating the stitches just a little bit. You are painting with wool so take both strokes. Of course you must wear this on an embroidery frame because you

need a firm surface. Just as an artist needs a painting to be on an easel. Then you can work with both hands very easily and it's so simple even a child can do it. But what you must remember is not to be afraid. And. Don't worry about overlapping stitches and filling in later. And I'm going to come to my next color and just put in a few touches to see what it looks like if I don't like them. I don't really have to undo it. I simply put a few more stitches on top. Don't scatter your stitches too freely either or your overall effect may be too busy. You see I did a rather Daka leaf on one side and the next leaf is just made of two lighter shades. And then the next one has three

of the next color so that there is a slight difference between the leaves and yet. All the all of the colors are mixed within them. Now when you have all your tree bans worked it's time to put your decorations on. And as I showed you before they really do stand out beautifully because you've worked your leaves underneath and then you've superimposed all these different stitches. He has whipped spider's web. He has a woven spider's web. This is padded satin stitch. And this is my favorite. Bullion nuts. They look rather like this. You see when they're on the tree you get an effect of fans of color and then groups of little. Decorations. On the top with the white ribbons to separate them. OK

now let's do a bullion not here goes up at one end down at the other where you first started. Don't make the mistake of coming up right. We just went in that thread won't pull through. You have to go right underneath back to the other side. And then like a whiz twist around the needle making lots of twists and measure it. And if it doesn't reach the point where your threat is coming out of the material. Put a few more twists. Now this is where everybody held on like grim death because they're afraid if they let go this will happen. Which is true but. You have to loosen it otherwise you can't possibly get the needle through. So when you've done your twists loosen up on that thread and let it be.

Able to move easily. Nah I'm pulling right through and don't get upset if it looks amiss because you can stroke it on its tummy and put the needle right on top and pull tightly pulling tightly is important and then it is your perfect stitch a pulley and not like a wood. I'll do another one so that you can really remember it come up go down and come up when you first started. Hoping the 8 underneath. Don't pull it through. Twist. And push them down. They. Measure. It's always better to have more threads around the needle than too few because you are not very mangy and you get a thin women instead of a fat one. Stroke it off the needle like milking a cow.

And if it snowballs up and gets all knotted underneath just stroke it down again and pull and sort it out with a needle and a nice stroke it gently. Messa it into place. Tell it to behave itself pull tightly and go through. Now I did a home. Stall of those put in knots and then I put a French knot in the middle. French knot. Was known as the forbidden stitch because it was done in China and they did the tiniest little stitches. Wrapping the wool just once around the needle and they were done in such fine silk. Everybody who did them went blood and so that's what I call the forbiddance stitch. But it's rather a nice little knot to see if you should only wrap it round once because that makes it much neater hope a needle and a nice twist round. Wrap it. Let it. Fit.

Brown the needle. And then go in. Do one roll off and we're going to have a rather wide center to our Daisy. This really is the frosting on the cake because it's such fun working with these bright colors on top of the green leaves. But over here I did some padded satin stitch in blue. Actually it's a bright blue which Randy 5 breaks with the brilliant emerald greens greens underneath and padded satin stitch. It's very simple it's just stitches in one. And then the top in the other direction. Well it's a pity I didn't have quite time to finish but too many stitches too little tongue. Anyway. And then to be finished in a day

maybe a day and a half.