Flat Chenille Stitch

I had mentioned in a previous post the similarities between Pondo (African Circle stitch) and Chenille stitch.  Jean Powers posted a basic tutorial by Diana Balogh in Beading Daily.  It looked fairly simple except some of the turns were a bit complex. I spent several hours trying to bead the sample on the left from that tutorial and kept getting lost on the turns.  My solution, of course, was to make my own illustrations, breaking down the parts that confused me into different steps. 

While I was at it, my muse plunked some designs into my head so I made some graphs of those.  The heart on the right is the result of one of those.  I can't tell if the slight irregularity is a result of uneven tension (I know I got the start row too tight) or if the beads aren't as uniform as the yellow ones on the left.  I suspect it's a little of both.

Now that I've got the illustrations drawn and have sort of mastered the stitch, I hope to have an illustrated tutorial posted to my Hub Pages within the week.  Writing the accompanying article will be the hard part.

Wow! The year's nearly over.  Christmas this weekend.  I hope all of you stay safe on the highway if you're traveling, and that you have a very Merry Christmas. . .or whatever holiday you celebrate this time of year.

2015 Christmas Ornaments

I've finally finished this year's Christmas ornaments. Unlike past years, I only designed one new one this year. 

The Holly Wreath ornament is this year's new ornament and it will be on sale the rest of this month at my BeadPatternsBoutique shop. Check out my On Sale now category for it and other designs in my Shuffle Sale.


The Drum, Christmas Angel and Twin Snowflake are all from previous years. I've modified each angel and snowflake by changing colors here and there, so they all look a little different from the pattern (because I'm averse to doing the same thing twice).

My granddaughter will be hosting Thanksgiving this year. I hope it's a great success. I love family gatherings, but I'm reluctant to host them. I get exhausted just attending.

Now on to tedious everyday happenings.  It's time to start learning the flat chenille stitch I mentioned in my last blog. , , and then there's the matter of keeping my vehicle running. I've been saying for a year if I have to put it in the shop one more time I'm just going to get rid of it.  Maybe it's time to make good on that threat.

Christmas Ornaments 2015

I've finished 10 of the 17 Christmas ornaments I need to make this year. Five wreaths and five twin snowflakes. 
I made the wreaths first then the snowflakes.  On the fourth snowflake, I noticed that all of them had a stained glass effect due to matte transparent, transparent and opaque beads being used in each ornament.  It wasn't planned at all. I was sifting through my bead stash and that's just how things came up. Since nine of them were stained glass, I deliberately made the tenth one the same way. 

Now I have to decide which ornaments to make for the youngest group.  I haven't come up with any inspiration for that type of ornaments yet this year, so I'll have to choose from the 2009 collection or the 2010 collection. I need to go back through my notes and see who has what.

Everyone thought I was stressing over nothing when I was having such a hard time getting the wreath pattern to work, but what they didn't understand is how slow I am at brick stitch, so the last phase of ornaments not only contains more ornaments than the first two, but it will take me longer.  I just have to keep calm and breathe.

Exploring Other Needlework Crafts

This weekend I just couldn't stay focused on beading and getting Christmas ornaments finished.  
First I found a free kindle book on Tunisian Crochet.  This is a stitch I learned as a girl known only to me as afghan stitch and I only learned the single and double crochet version.  I never thought of it as  crochet that could have various stitches just like regular crochet until I started looking through that book.
I did some research on the internet and came up with this site, Tunisian Crochet by Stitch Diva. I then remembered that I'd seen beaded Tunisian crochet and started looking for pictures.  I found several, but they weren't free to copy. I finally found a pattern for the necklace above.
Not a complicated pattern but I thought about trying it. Then I remembered you have to string the beads onto the crochet thread first. . .not my forte so I gave that up. 
Next I found an adult coloring book for free and downloaded it.  

I've spent Sunday and Monday telling myself to put the colored pencils down and get back to beading.  When I've finished the 17 ornaments for this year, maybe I'll get back to learning the intricacies of Tunisian crochet. 

On to New Things

I've had to put the tutorial for Mirror Mirror on hold. Either the design will need to be simplified, or my illustrating skills will have to improve before I can finish it.

It's time to start Christmas ornaments. Those of you who know me know I make beaded ornaments for the younger ones of the three generations that come after me.  This year there are a total of 17.  I'll try to get the five youngest ones a brick stitch "toy" made, the next age group will get a beaded star I think and the oldest five will get my new Holly Wreath.

This is a 3-D design, quite sturdy and very "blingy".  After struggling with my last design for a whole frustrating month, I was delighted with the ease with which this one came together. Only took me a week and a half, most of which was spent on the tutorial.

The pattern has been uploaded to all three of my pattern shops. 

BeadPatternsBoutique

The Bead Coop

Craftsy

Doodlin' With Piggy Beads

What can I say? It's been a blah week. Erratic weather changes stole my motivation. I got a good start on my piggy bead experiment, but I got so engrossed in the beading process that I got behind in the illustrations. Now I'm going to have to take part of the embellishment out because I can't tell exactly how I did the last row.

I'm not exactly fond of the amethyst colored piggy beads.  They look good in the picture with the light shining through them, but without direct light they're a rather gray purple.  

As I started with the embellishments I thought, done in Christmas colors, this design would make a pretty wreath ornament.  I've finally found a source of piggies that actually had a good assortment and have ordered five more colors.  The design still needs a little tweaking even on what I've already done.  

Stitch Tutorial Library Links Updated

After discovering that one of the sites where I had published my stitch tutorials was not functioning, I have been busy publishing all of them to Squidoo.  I'm pretty sure it's not going to go away any time soon.  I still have to put the tutorial for Puffed Bezel on Squidoo, but I have all the others so that the links work. I'm having to redraw the graphics to make them compatible with the new site so it's taking a while.
For all of you that clicked on the links and got an error message I apologize.  If you find any of the links don't work now, please notify me.

I hope all of you got your $10 gift certificate from Artbeads.com. Keep checking back as they have wonderful promotional sales throughout the year.

It's cold and windy here on the high plains of Texas, but no snow in the forcast, so I guess we won't have a white Christmas this year.

Here's wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday and a very prosperous New Year.  Be safe and warm through the Holidays.

Christmas Card Display

It seems we all run out of shelf or mantle space for displaying the Christmas cards we receive each year.

I made this cute Christmas card display out of a few things I already had around the house.

Click on the title of this post to see the instructions for making it, then go through your craft stash and see what you can come up with. Get the family involved and make it a handmade Christmas this year.