Morning Has Broken: A Supplement to What is Needlepoint

Last fall I had the privilege of going to Baltimore for the 2007 ANG Seminar. I was asked to write about the exhibit award winners for ANG's "What is Needlepoint?" section of their website. Now that ANG has redone the website and posted the winners for 2007, I want to add something to what I said about the pieces there. If you aren't familiar with "What is Needlepoint?," please visit ANG's website and click on the 2007 section to see what I said.

http://www.needlepoint.org/whatis.php

If you read my blurb instead of just being mesmerized by the fantastic stitching, you know I awarded my own ribbon for the piece I'd most like to take home. Due to the cost, ANG only photographed award winners, so I was unable to include a photo of this piece, although I described it thoroughly in my narrative on the ANG website. Through the kindness of the stitcher, Joni Stevenson, I am able to post a photograph of the lake scene I found so charming here on Blog.

Joni, who is working through ANG's Master Teacher Program and who will teach a piece at the Milwaukee seminar, has won ANG ribbons for various pieces over the years and has taught for ANG and EGA chapters. In fact, the 2007 winner of First Place in the Adaptation/Non-Professional category, a Judges Award, and the Best in Show piece was stitched by Joni. Clearly she is a master of the needle. Joni graciously wrote a bit about how she came up with this original design below, including listing the threads and stitches she choose to convey early morning fishing trips on the lake.

I hope you enjoy looking at Joni's original piece entitled "Morning Has Broken" which would look really good hanging over my mantel here in Chilly Hollow....


************************************************************************************************* This piece, Morning Has Broken, is dedicated to my husband, who last summer could not convince me or one of our four children to get up at the crack of dawn to go canoeing. I told him that the only family member that would be willing to do that would be the dog.

I have used a complementary color scheme of blue-violet and yellow-orange, which are the colors of first light. Early in the morning the fog lies across the water and in between the small islands before it is burned off by the warm sunlight of the day. The serenity of the moment is held in check by the quiet passage of a canoe across the lake. The quiet, peaceful horizontal lines of the islands and the quiet, strong vertical lines of the trees are contrasted with the sharp diagonal lines of the light of the newly risen sun pushing the dark of the night away. Soon noise and activity will be the dominant force on the lake, but for now it is still peaceful.

My choice of color scheme was purposeful in the respect that I wanted to test myself to see if I could achieve a good design using only two colors and their tints, tones and shades, including the tones created by the mixture of the two tertiary colors, which is a lovely neutral brown-gray. The most important aspect of a complementary color scheme is the control and use of value. While the premise is a peaceful moment on the calm water, I needed something more so as not to have the design be too boring. I emphasized the drama of the breaking morning by juxtaposing the light values of the sunlight with the dark values of the sky and water. I started by painting the slash of yellow-orange across the sky, followed by painting the rest of the 18 count canvas blue-violet.

The threads and stitches were chosen to complement the item being stitched. The clouds in the sky are stranded cotton threads, with several colors mixed in the needle to show the reflection of the sun on the underside of the clouds. The stitch I choose was a diagonal stitch because the clouds are in motion.

The background hills are stitched in tent stitch using Impressions, a silk and wool blend. I like to build the picture from the background to the foreground, so the trees are stitched on top of the background hills. The lightest value of the Impressions was used to simulate a foggy effect around the base of the hills.

The small islands and trees are stitched with wools and cotton threads. One of my favorite wool threads is RG's Twedie 18. (I am so unhappy that they are discontinuing making this thread. The color mixtures in this wool thread are wonderful to work with, and Rainbow Tweed does not come close to replacing it, in my opinion.) The trees in the far background are surface-stitched with random straight stitches in a single strand of dark cotton thread. The trees in the midground area are stitched in Outline Stitch (trunk) and random Gobelin stitches for the branches. We have white pine trees where I live and they have a wonderful airy look to them. The randomness of the Gobelin stitches are used to achieve that effect. I like to use several colors in my trees, not just green or brown. There is gray and navy blue in the trees also.

The water is stitched in stranded silk using a horizontal stitch to achieve a quiet, calm effect. I used silk here instead of cotton because it has more of a smooth, shiny quality to it, for the reflections in the water. I made the canoe out of silk dupioni fabric painted a darker value of the sky color, and the man and dog are stitched on Congress cloth and appliqued to the ground canvas. The dog's ears are covered wire, so that the ear facing the viewer stands out from the dog's head.

The man is facing away from the viewer, in the process of slowly paddling the canoe. He is stitched tent in stranded cotton and the dog is stitched in Encroaching Gobelin using Wisper threads.

I tried to use threads, colors and stitches to achieve realistic effects in this piece.

Joni Stevenson

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I think you suceeded beautifully, Joni. Thanks for sharing this wonderful piece of original needle art!


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