Needlepoint Cookie Chronicles, Pinwheel Cookie

Finished yesterday, this Little Shoppe Pinwheel cookie is my latest completed cookie. This cookie is a fine-grained sugar cookie with a jam filling. This kind of sugar cookie has a very fine, sandy texture. As a child I was very fond of a local sugar cookie that had such a fine, grainy texture they were called Sand Tarts. That’s a name often given to cookies with this texture.

Unlike Sand Tarts which are flat, Pinwheel cookies are rolled flat, spread with a filling or a different dough, rolled up, and sliced to make the cookie you see. These ones are spread with jam, but you can also find them spread with chocolate ganache or made with a layer of chocolate cookie dough.

Materials

• Little Shoppe Canvas Company canvas CC-3: Follow the Yellow Brick Road
• 1 skein each Gloriana Lorikeet: Vanilla Dark (003W4) and Pecan Light (133W2)
• 1 package solid or hand-dyed Kreinik Fine (#8) metallic

The model uses hand-dyed Kreinik from Colour Compliments.

Stitching

Because the grain of this cookie is so fine, I chose a very fine-grained wool to stitch the cookie. Lorikeet is a nine-strand hand-dyed wool. It comes in color families in 3-5 shades per family. I chose the darkest shade of Vanilla to be the lighter color and the lightest shade of pecan to be the darker color.

Because these threads are hand-dyed there is variation in color and shade in each skein. Some skeins and colors have more of this than others. To avoid diagonal lines in your piece, stitch in straight rows.

You will use three strands of Lorikeet. This thread can be hard to ply. Pull out a little of a strand, then both push down the remaining strands and pull out the single strand, working slowly. As more strands get pulled out of the bundle, this process becomes easier.

Stitch the cookie inTent Stitch first the dark, then the light. Completely stitch the cookie before continuing to the jam.
Beginning at the center, stitch the jam in Serendipity Stitch, below, using the metallic. The thinner thread will help the jam to recede a bit from the cookie because of lighter coverage. Using a metallic will give the jam a realistic sparkle.

Serendipity is related to Criss-cross Hungarian but it is a smaller stitch. Because of that small size it fits nicely into the narrow, twisted area. If you use a hand-dyed metallic you will have variations in color. Solid colors will be move uniform.

Next up: an apricot-jam filled thumbprint cookie!