Monday, August 11, 2008

Insanity Improv


It is very hard to photograph metallics and beads but I hope you can get a sense of how nicely Insanity Improv turned out.

The challenges were many on this piece as Gay Ann Rogers deliberately omits any hints as to what colors to put where, or even what threads to use beyond starting with Watercolours or an overdye. I deliberately went with threads I could ply, even unraveling the four plies of the strand of Pebbly Perle to do the lace outline with only one ply. The original outlines were the entire strand of Pebbly Perle covered with four plies of silk to raise them a lot but the corner lines were only two strands of silk covered with metallic. I doubled the blending filament to couch those corner lines but only used one strand of blending filament to do the side stars. I ended up doing opposite corners with two colors of silk and metallic, changing one to more blue and one to more green. I wasn't thrilled with either but together they worked so I left those colors to vary. I did add black beads to the center around the edges of the waffle stitch. It needled something there.

It was a fun challenge and a nice break from the wizard. Thank you, Gay Ann!

Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

5 comments:

NCPat said...

Amazing! You just stitched this right up in no time! Very pretty!

Jeanne said...

Wow! "Jane Goes Insane", indeed! I was shocked to see your post in GAR's classroom. :-) I haven't moved my blog reader stuff over to the new PC yet, so I haven't kept up!

Anyway, the ornament looks great! On black canvas, no less. Congratulations! :-)

(Oh by the way, the photo didn't show up here on blogger. I had to go over to the 360 site to see the finished piece.)

The Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure said...

You mean who knew Miss I Hate Charts was sitting in the back? LOL

There is always something to learn from a good teacher and my philosophy has always been to learn whenever I can. You never know when something in another style will help with a painted canvas. I have learned a lot about mixing colors, which I can use later.

So I wanted to try a GAR piece. Her work is magnificent but the larger pieces are not worth the aggravation to me. Want to know how much trouble I had?

Well, look at the first image of the started design. I put the lacy edge around the wrong box....

Jane, winner of the counted thread idiot award this week in CH

The Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure said...

Mysteries of the Internet. I can see photos on both blogs myself, but it is possible that some people couldn't. Don't know why, but even though I always do the same thing, sometimes photos are clickable to enlarge and sometimes not. Pat in NC thinks it depends on how many photos are in a blog entry. Me, I just think my laptop hates me.

Anyway, I do a mirror blog for this reason. Have trouble on one, check out the other and maybe things there will be ok.

Sorry!

The Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure said...

You may call me Speedy Gonzalez now, Pat. LOL