Santa's gold trim

On to Santa's details!

I started with the gold trim at the top and bottom of the navy area on his clothing (skirt? robe? tunic? what is this?). This is simply a heavy gold braid, perhaps a size 16, couched with a smaller metallic gold thread. In this case, the couching thread is the now-obsolete DMC Fil Or, but a size 4 braid or metallic floss would have worked.

The same threads were also used for couching the swirly design on the lower portion of Santa's red robe. I deliberately simplified the path of the right side of this line of couching since something else was going to go over it.

According to Santa's stitch guide, he was supposed to get a spider web rose in gold in that far right area. I tried this, but it didn't stick around. It looked like a big gold blob - not at all like the nice flower shown in Joan's original.

Instead, I kept the "spokes" of that web and turned them into fake bullion knots. I simply wrapped each of the spokes with the thicker gold thread, careful not to catch the red threads underneath everything. Then I added lazy daisies in between each of these spokes.

Unfortunately, since I no longer had a solid flower there, the original swirly line showed through the now-airy flower. It looked strange. I very carefully cut the couched thread in the middle of the flower. I pulled the thread out from under the flower and brought the ends to the back of the canvas on either side of the flower. Fortunately, there were only a few couching stitches used in this area. I was able to pull a few to the back, but a couple are still lurking underneath the flower. They're not visible, and that's all that matters.

From the photo, it's somewhat hard to tell, but this detail does add a bit of dimension. Perhaps a semi-side view would help...

Adding little details like these to pictorial projects (as opposed to geometrics or samplers, for example) is really simple and can have a lot of impact. In this case, some of the details were called out in the stitch guide, but this experience is an example of how easy it is to add some zing with a bit of embellishment.