Variegated Threads, Continued

Last week I wrote about the discoveries made while working with variegated thread.  Knowing that most of you already knew all about and had vastly more experiences with this subject, I added what I was learning.  Every now and then, while standing in front of thread cabinets pondering my next purchase, I hear someone say, "Oh, I don't use variegated threads."  To me, that's like saying, "I don't use cinnamon."  I do understand that we all have differing tastes, but I can't help wondering if a few of those people don't use variegated threads because it intimidates them.  I hope they'll experiment some day if that is indeed the case.

 

Anyway, here is the completed snowman. All I have left to stitch are the tongues (aka pen wipes) that will be attached on the left and right and the backing. I hope hesitant stitchers will try variegated threads because I had such a ball stitching this little piece! 

 

 

The pattern had some elements that I changed.   I redesigned the snowflakes on the body of the snowman. Oh, and those irregular squarish coal-for-buttons? Glued on and then secured with honking-big French knots and single-strand black embroidery floss for coal-nugget eyes and smile. A more noticeable change was the branches that are the snowman's arms.  They are supposed to have green leaves, but that didn't seem right.  It's winter!  So my branches are from an evergreen and have needles and pine cones (one strand beige and one strand darker brown in French knots) .  The black bird is a red one singing with spread wings.  

Below you can see what I did with the carrot nose.  I had discussed using the thread to indicate the ridges in the carrot, and it worked well - makes it look more, well, carroty!   Fortunately,  I was able to find some appropriate buttons in my button collection to add that missing little something to the stars.  By the way, here you can see what I meant when I mentioned how subtle the variegation often is in Valdani threads (which I used on the stars).

 

This sort of folk art piece is a wonderful place to try new threads in an obvious way.  Clearly, it gave me a lot of pleasure.  I'm about to start a new piece where the thread choices will be more subtle.  It will be interesting to compare the two pieces.