Halloween License Plate

I just love this Oregon license plate and am stitching it for Halloween. It’s one of Sandy Grossman-Morris‘s personalized license plates.

What makes it cool is that we’re trying something different. I want a piece which looks good both under normal light AND under black light. This is ending up being more of a challenge than I thought. Why?

First there is the problem that I can’t use only glow-in-the-dark threads. Then it wouldn’t look good in normal light and it would be boring. So I wanted to mix in some other elements. The mountains are done in Criss-cross Hungarian with crosses. The Hungarians are Watercolours and the crosses will be glow-in-the-dark, so I’ll get a pattern of dots under black light. The sky will be T Stitch using a glow-in-the-dark thread so that will be a different check pattern. Some parts, like the gray line of the mountains, the numbers and the tree, are done in threads which won’t glow, so they will be dark against the other areas.

For the tree I’m using Water n’Ice and Basketweave, so it really stands out. I’m also hoping it might glow a little bit.

But the real kicker is going to be the letters. I want them to be black and I want them to stand out under black light. But no one makes a glow-in-the-dark thread which isn’t light.

So what’s a person to do?

I’m planning on outlining each letter using Whipped Barckstitch and a white glow-in-the-dark thread.

I’ll let you know how it works out.