The Letter R

In addition to her Mirabilia designs, Nora Corbett does a bunch of smaller cross stitch designs under her own name.  I wanted to stitch some of her letter fairies for a while now since I thought they were quite lovely designs. I was less sold on the color schemes.  For starters, the patterns call for hand-dyed specialty floss.  The one time I used such floss it bled so I wanted to switch things to DMC.  Then there is the fact that using the called for supplies would make the project cost at least $50 which is way too much for a project you can stitch in a few days.  So I bought new linen, but used threads and beads I already had.

I started by trying to match the called for colors to DMC floss then ended up chucking that and improvising.  I stitched the main part of the R in 4180 (all colors DMC, blending filaments and cord from Krenik, and beads from Mill Hill).  The shadows and fairy's hair are 3371.  I simplified the colors in the upright using 3808, 3810, and 597 accented with beads in 3035 and 18022.  The flesh is 754 back-stitched with 758.  The dress is 317, 318, and 762 with 001 blending filament.  I used silver thread of unknown manufacturer for the strings coming off the dress.  The beading in the dress and hair was done in 3007, 2010, and 16010.  I wanted the wings to look semi-transparent (unlike the original design) so I used one strand of whatever color should have been there in the R along with one strand 5200 and 095 blending filament.  The rest of the wings were in 5200 with one strand 095 blending filament.  The wings were back-stitched in 095 #4 braid.  The fabric is a light blue with some sparkle woven in.  I think it worked out pretty well.