Erica; Bell Pulls, Borders And Bandings; 125; Erica: Bell Pulls, Borders and Bandings

Bell Tolls for this and Bandit. I bought a plain white hat and asked my teenage daughter to make a hatband for it. Well typical of her anything because she always does the office it. She covered the hat with flaws and left the hat band perfect play. But I couldn't be too cross with her because it really is rather a smashing hat. She said she wanted the flowers to look as though they were growing down from the brim from the top and growing right over the brim so she made little bubbles to grow right over it and then she put purple felt on Denise to match the hat band. Well that sort of design would make rather a good board anyway. And that's the sort of thing that these bell pulls have done with said in cruel. And that scrolling designs a bell pole you know is something that people use to hang on the wall. If

we hang it up nowadays and pulled and rang the bell I don't think anything would happen. But. It's rather good decorative hanging to put on any wall because sometimes it just fits the narrow shape and you see the scrolling designs really lend themselves to doing a very strong stem and all the flowers with lots of different stitches. This one is an early American patent with almost a sampler of stitches on it and this one in greens and blue and rather muted colors is rather reminiscent of the English Jacobean sort of designs. But in both of them you can get all kinds of stitches and really have because you just go from one place to another and you finished it before you know it because the small shapes lend themselves

to such a variety of stitches and the strong lines of the stems hold everything together. Well that was cruel. But here's a piece of needle point. We had a stool around the house for a great many yes and I decided it needed a new cover. So I made what I think was rather a cheating way but it was rather a good way of making fool the tassels as a band and then covering the whole stool with Fell of it on top. So all I had to do was the border around it to make an effect. And those tassels really stand out in three dimensions because I chose all kinds of very bone colors and fill the background in with a medium shade so that they really did have a Trump effect.

If you want to do tassels like that you have to take. A piece of graph paper and mock your design on that first. I took this passion from an old Victorian sampler that I had and the tassels were done in very soft shades of blue. But I decided. To make it really effective in bone scale. You should choose colors that are very contrast ing. I made red tassels so don't just get carried away and think that you should do them in two or three shades of all the same red take pale salmon. Brilliant are Inge. And deep magenta. And then with the black and beside it you get a wonderful depth of shadow. You could do the same thing whether it was green blue or purple.

Now the stitch that it's done in is regular needlepoint stitch come up. One thread over and one thread back and cover the canvas with a slanting stitch. It really gives you a smooth tapestry effect. And it's very satisfactory to do. I find it so much easier to work on an embroidery frame like this because you can count the stitches so much more easily. You see I'm following from my graph and working this aren't here. First. It's a good idea to have all your colors threaded as I have. So that you can bring them one after the other together. That's all they are Inge next will come. The magenta. And you can work each

tassel in that way. I'm using a white rug because I like this bold effect. I especially like the speed with which you can finish it too. That's to get all knotted up like this. So. When you finished all your tassels you should go back to the background and fill that in. With a medium shade as I said so that both the light colors and the dark show up to their best advantage. Well needlepoint bandings could be used for all sorts of things I think those tassels would be quite nice. Couldn't tiebacks or even those valances. And here's a needlepoint belt that was made by the

husband of a friend of mine for himself not for her. And it's done in jello in needlepoint that's that plain upright stitch which is relatively easy to do but I rather like the way the four shades of color worked on the diagonal so it gives a slanted effect. Well back to cruel bandings. Here are some curtains that a few people of mine did and she did. Six pairs of them. But it didn't seem such a tremendous amount of work because she worked the pattern on a narrow band of linen in which she could roll up and take with her in her purse whenever she went to a meeting or anywhere at all. And then when she finished she machine stitched them on to the curtains which were the same material. So when they're hanging up they really appear to be just like a narrow board I work on the curtain. It's the

same sort of scrolling pattern as the bell pulls with a nice strong dark green line which holds everything beautifully together. And then she could do all kinds of different stitches and different colors which fitted with her living room. There's rather a nice pale blue mouse here with little bullion stitches in the corner behind him. Well. Another thing that you can do with bandings a luggage rack straps. This design is just an end to Twyning ribbon. With Napoleonic leaves and be the baby's head in that fluffy turkey work stitch that such fun to do. But the bands of ribbon done in a rather nice to called Bourdon stitch which I want to show you by the way.

Like it tracks quite good too. When used as folding tables you can always decide to use them and put a plastic a clear plastic tray on top and then if you are so pleased with your work when you're finished it will be better preserved than if you put suitcases on top of it. Burden Stitch is Cole Burton stitch because it was invented by a man called William Burton who worked in William Morris is factory in England. And. He apparently designed this stitch so that you could do a geometric filling on a needlepoint linen. In other words usually if you do a geometric stitch such as this one is if you look at the finished effect over here you usually have to have a canvas background and do it in a needlepoint stitch. But if you put these tram lines across to guide you you can

do very regular stitching on the top afterwards which looks almost like weaving. I'm coming up on one side going down on the other. Making. Perfectly parallel lines without measuring just gauging them and then coming out on the same side that I went on don't go down here and then come across to this side that would waste Whoa in the back. Just. Keep going and coming up on the same side and then going across you'll find that you get very used to judging distances with your eye and it's really better to do that than to measure it carefully because you get so custom to making them regular. That it's awfully good practice. To. Start in the middle because any geometric Stitch is better when it's done. From the center out. I did these lines in the same way I

studied him and worked to this in and then came back and worked out the small stitches at the points which are more difficult to get even than the broad ones in the center. So in the same way stuck to a top stitching in the center come up. Touching this thread right across that line in the middle to touch the other side. If one stitch appears to be a little bit not quite straight don't worry because the overall effect. Will be regular. Space the stitches about. The whip part of two stitches as though there were two stitches between them. And then. When you get to the end of the line you're ready to fit in the next row. Rather like bricks come up here

and go over here. They. Come up. And do you notice that I'm pushing my threads apart a little. That's so that you are sure to get to it long enough because this stitch looks horrible. If the stitches a little short ones like this were to cross the line and. You see it doesn't have the nice effect of weaving. So I'll have to take that out. Showing you what not to do. By the way are you having difficulty threading a needle. Because don't forget to squeeze that flea. That's what I always tell people if you put the wool over the needle like this. Squeeze it very tightly and. Bury it between your finger and then press the needle over it. You'll see

the wool goes through much more easily than if you tried to do it like this. Squashing that soft wool through the needle with too loose a grip between your finger and thumb. So put it over. Pull it tight. Imagine it's a flea about to jump it and push the needle over it. Then you hardly have to look at it Joel to be able to thread it. Now this wooden stitch looks quite attractive. If you take several colors and shade with it. So when you do that you should take the other color and just put it in just one stitch a time. Well now you see you can board a band almost anything. The sounds are all into changeable. Just let your imagination run riot.