Colombina: First Post

As I mentioned in my last post I started working on my Mother's Christmas / Birthday present.  There's two pictures so she gets on for Christmas and one for her Birthday in January.  My plan is to get both stitched and given to her on Christmas, then have them framed in time for her Birthday, but since they're going to hung up at her house I want her to help pick out the frames and mats.

I started with Colombina, as I guess would be obvious from my post title.  Here's a picture of it on the right.

I couldn't find the exact colors I was looking for in fabric so I eventually decided to try hand dying my own fabric.  I took 28 ct. evenweave fabric, cut it in half, one for Colombina and one for Anthera.  For Colombina I dyed the fabric a dark gray.  Then I used a dying technique I found online using black dye.  This is what I came up with.

I don't think it looks too bad for my first attempt.  The thread at the top is the variegated thread that I'm using, but in my usual fashion it's a  little washed out.  The thread is Caron Waterlilies in the color Ash.  My initial intent was to have a silver thread along with it to make it sparkling.  However, I was so excited to get started I completely forgot about the silver.  Before I knew it, I already had quite a bit done, what I've started to call its mustache.


I was a little bummed but it looked really good and I didn't want to take it apart so I figured I'd just do both without the shininess.

I talked to my sister and told her what happened and she asked why I didn't just start using it from this point on.  I told her it would look funky with the one part not being stitched, then I realized that my weird sense of stitching the mirror images gave me a way to have some fun.  I decided to just add the filament to the parts that surround the eyes on the masks.  So I did those next.

Unfortunately it doesn't show up very well in this picture  but everything stitched in the picture that wasn't stitched in the last picture has silver in it, and it looks pretty cool, even next to the same color without the silver.  I also found out what a pain it is to stitch with the stuff.  It took me forever to get these four lines done.  Now I'm kind of happy I initially forgot the silver.

The rest of this will be stitched with just the variegated thread, no silver, so hopefully it will go a bit quicker from this point.  I am, however, worried about running out of thread.  Only time will tell.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Colombina
Pattern by: Fire Wing Designs
Started Stitching: September 28, 2012
Fabric: 28ct. hand-dyed Evenweave
Floss: Caron Waterlilies 2 over 2, or 3 over 2 with silver filament
Percentage: 54.84% complete
Stitches: 2,006 out of 3,658 complete