Stocking Detail 16

This little guy is the main focal point on my son's stocking. I don't keep track of the time I spend on each project, but I do know I spent many hours on this. His body is beaded with a variety of beads. I've heard the term "thread painting" in various places. I've never tried it following any instructions, but I think my natural style is fairly similar on motifs like this. This could be "bead painted". I tried to create a sense of direction and depth with the placement of the beads, as well as create texture that imitates dragon scales. The tail turned out to be padded satin stitched. I started the tail by couching down a thick blue metallic fiber for the vein of each section. Along each side of the veins, I did a narrow satin stitch with red metallic floss. After doing quite a bit of the red, I decided I didn't like it. It was too harsh a contrast with the background and flow as nicely from the body as I envisioned. I only rarely rip anything out, preferring to plod along and make the best of "happy little accidents", as a painting teacher used to say. So I combined a gold metallic thread with an olive green rayon floss and satin stitched over the red, letting the red peek through. I'm quite pleased with the result.

An update on the pink stocking, I've auditioned laces and trims and threads and fibers and decided on a color scheme: pink and purple with gold accents.