Mini Mystery Monday #3

There's just a little bit more to do before this small ornament design is finished.

First, let's put a quick little border pattern around your set of eyelets.
When working on a diagonal border, you have to find an element that fits well on the diagonal. Smyrna Stars are perfect for creating a quick but elegant border.

Starting at the top tip of your stitched eyelets, create a row of Smyrna Stars, alternating colors of 1 strand gold Ribbon Floss with 1 strand of your bright accent color #5 pearl cotton... with a graph that looks like this:

And your stitches should look something like this:

Although I should mention here that you certainly can stitch your Smyrnas all in one color if you want (all gold? all red metallic??) or you can stitch TWO rows of Smyrnas if you want a wider border space... In any event, work your Smyrnas all around your eyelets, so the border is finished, before going on to the next step...

Which is to add the final outer border - a padded border that looks like this:

With 1 strand of your dark #5 pearl cotton color, lay 4 long diagonal stitches along the outer edge of your stitching. Then cover those long stitches with straight stitches (going over 5 canvas threads), to create a raised, padded border.

To see how all the elements fit together, here's the full graph for this ornament:

Once your borders are all stitched, you have one more stitch sequence to work. You need to add a few more long diagonal straight stitches in-between each of your eyelet diamonds. Use 1 strand of the finer gold Kreinik #8 Braid 002HL, and you'll notice as you stitch them how outlining your diamond eyelets suddenly gives them more definition and makes them "pop" on the canvas.

And to make your ornament as sparkly as possible (that's what ornaments are about, right?) let's finish by adding lots of beads! See the full graph above, to place all your beads. And once you do, here's what your ornament should look like:

I thought this little ornament was super fast and fun to stitch -- I hope you agree! I also think there are lots of ways you can stitch this particular design and change the look entirely by playing around with different colors and different threads. I'd love to try this in a more monochromatic color scheme - maybe whites and golds? or icy blues and silver? - and see how it looks... If you stumble across any great combos, send me a picture and I'll share it with the rest of the Mini Mystery stitchers out there!

And P.S.: I'm taking a break from ornament stitching for a little bit, and I won't be posting anything on the Monday after Christmas..... so check back a little bit later, okay?