We finish up the blocks for Jubilee with the most delightful Tent Stitch technique — a needlepoint version of marble! It uses a technique developed by David McCaskill for one of his teaching pieces which allows the stitcher to make faux marble designs on canvas. It is a simple technique which gives amazing results.
Nonsense, the name of this block. is a simple block which is great for this technique because it has large patches. It goes in the remaining open block.
Depending on the colors choosen for the marble, the effect can be subtle or loud. Like faux marble painting on wood, it can look like real marble or like something never seen in nature.
This block uses:
- Kreinik Tapestry braid (#12) 026V
- Kreinik Medium braid (#16) 007
- Needle Necessities Madras 652 (4 strands)
- Needle Necessities Overdyed Floss 182 (4 strands)
- Needle Necessities Overdyed Floss 1481 (4 strands)
- Kreinik Silk Mori 1092
- Impressions 1095 (background)
In this case, the drawing is provided, see the map and instructions below, but when making a marble from scratch, find some books on faux finishing to get an idea of the types of veining in marble. Generally the veins are jagged diagonal lines with shorter, thinner lines breaking off from them. Working from the corners or sides towards the center is easiest. In general most of the main lines will run along the same diagonals.
The basic method for stitching a marble is simple. First make a pattern of veins on a piece of paper, then use this to trace the location of the veins on your canvas. Stitch the veins. Metallics are outstanding for this, but any accent colors, a thread with a different texture, or a thread which combines metallic and non-metallic in the same thread would all work well. Continental is always used to stitch the veins.
So it is easier to line up the veins for the marble, take a 4H drawing pencil and lightly mark out the edges of the marble patches on the canvas by coloring in each intersection, following the diagram below. The hardness of the lead will keep it from rubbing off on your threads and having the marble patches outlined this way will make it easy to see where the veins should be traced and stitched, since the outlines of the patches on the vein drawing are only approximate.
The drawing below shows the placement of the veins on the block as a whole. Use the straight line at the top to line up the drawing with the bottom of the block. Draw the veins with a drawing pencil (4H).
Stitch the veins in the central square in the pink metallic and the veins in the rectangles in the vintage amethyst metallic.
Once the veins are stitched, the rest of the marble is stitched using two threads, often an overdye and a solid. Begin with the overdye and stitch every other diagonal row. This will create an overall mottled look. For the solid color, find a color of floss which matches, as closely as possible, one of the colors in the overdye. In the model, Silk Mori and Madras were used for theses threads. If you are using an alternate color scheme, pick the second color from among the solid or semi-solid (overdyed using one color in various values) strandable threads. Use this thread to stitch the remainder of the area. The result look remarkably like real marble.
The central square will be stitched using the pink overdye, while the rectangles are stitched with the lavender overdye.
Now stitch the background using the gray Impressions. As a last step, outline the center square in backstitch over each side using the pink metallic, this will make the center stand out and is a nice accent technique.
A completely charted pattern of this block (as an alternative to tracing) is found below. The metallic threads are indicated with straight lines.
Follow the entire project on-line:
- Materials List
- Choosing Colors and Stitching Sashing
- Spool Block
- Dolley Madison Star
- Sawtooth
- Shoofly
- Winged Square
- Morning Star
- Chain
- Air Castle
- Box
- Star Cross
- Greek Cross
- Nonsense
- Borders and Corners
About Janet M Perry
Janet Perry is the Internet's leading authority on needlepoint. She designs, teaches and writes, getting raves from her fans for her innovative techniques, extensive knowledge and generous teaching style. A leading writer of stitch guides, she blogs here and lives on an island in the northeast corner of the SF Bay with her family
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