Monday, September 17, 2012

Mini Mystery Monday - final installment

I hope you had fun filling in all your blank spaces last week!  Is your piece starting to look more vibrant and elegant now?  Are you liking the variegated colors you've chosen? 

Let's finish up by adding the final touches -- a bit more metallic, as well as a handful of beads.

Here's the final graph for you to study and follow:


As you can see, there's just a few more things added to this graph:

First, there are some fine stitches added around the central cross box, using 1 strand of Kreinik #8 Braid.
I also added a really long metallic stitch down the "ditch" where the quadrants meet each other (see the photo of my stitched model further down this post) - which you may or may not want to do as well.

Second, there are the beads to be inserted wherever you can find places to put them.  I added gold seed beads in the places noted on the graph above.  But there are other places to sneak in beads, and I've indicated an "optional" line of beads in the Tied Triple Cross row, as shown in the graph above.
You may find even more places for beads, and by all means add them!  If this is going to be a sparkling hanging ornament, you can't have too many beads, can you?  So bead away!!  (Maybe you can use both large and small beads in your piece.... so please have fun beading this design...)

Third,  I've added an additional line of backstitching along the outer edge of the woven border - just because I wanted to finish off the edge and was curious to see what it might look like.  Use 1 strand of whatever pearl cotton color you used for your woven border, and place the backstitches as indicated on the graph above.

Here's what my finished model looked like (I used a variegated thread I hand-dyed myself in fall colors):


I'm planning to finish it with a tassel hanging from the bottom point, so I can hang it on a door or drawer pull....

I hope you've enjoyed working on this diamond-shaped project and will consider stitching it again in some different colorways.   You can even try it with solid colors (not variegated) and alternate the colors in each quadrant, so you have a true "harlequin" ornament.  Why not create a red and green Christmas version?  or maybe an elegant black & white version, with touches of gold?  oooooh, there are so many intriguing possibilities with this one design.  I hope you have time to do some exploring.....

In any event.... I'll see you again on a future Monday with another fun Mini Mystery project!

1 comment:

lewmew said...

I wasn't sure about this but seeing the finished product - WOW! I am putting it on my MUST DO list!

Are the instructions available all together in one place?

Linda