UPDATE: Thinking about this blog entry from yesterday, I'm not satisficd that I really conveyed what I meant to say, without giving away too many teacher secrets, of course. So I'm going to try again. Hopefully, what I'm getting at about choosing colors for charted designs, using a Gay Ann Roger's new design as an example, will make more sense. Communication is so hard!
Gay Ann Roger's blog is full of information about her mystery design called "Mystery in a Corner." She's posted how to order the chart on 4/24/08 and she has also been posting photos of various thread combinations that folks have ordered. The 4/24 posting has a picture of the piece itself, but you only see the center. The "mystery" is how the corners unfold. You won't know that until you actually stitch them!
http://gayannrogers.blogspot.com/
To see the photos of thread combos, scroll down to the left side of the home page and click on the March 2008 archive. Roll to the bottom of the page and start looking at the pictures. Remember, the latest blog entry is above earlier ones, so you'll have to navigate your way through the entries, looking for postings of the 32 different combinations. The reason they are important is what they say about our own color choices. Notice how many have blue or purple or red as the main color? That makes me think that most folks prefer those colors these days. Purple may be the burnt orange of the 1970s....
In Gay Ann's cyber classroom for the Shining Needle Society she is holding a color discussion which I found interesting. GAR is asking, "Which color combination do you like? Why?"
Myself, I'm fondest of the thread grouping #29 which is shown above, because I like at least three contrasting colors in charted designs and I also liked the perle cotton thread. Folks who already have their charts and have started stitching say that the perle cotton is very prominent in the center of the design (looks to me that you use the perle cotton to do the framework for the center section which you can see in the photograph of the center of this pattern, so I went through the pictures, choosing first the color combos I liked, then I winnowed out choices if I wasn't crazy about the perle cotton in a set. Finally, I looked for thread combos with more colors instead of ones with various shades of only 1-2 colors. I think designs with only one shade don't show off detail very well.
But the real question here is--what colors do you like? And WHY?
Many thanks to Gay Ann Rogers for a very thought-provoking question.
If you are curious about the classes the Shining Needle Society facilitates, you should head to Yahoo Groups and sign up for the SNS homeroom, which is the place where new class announcements are made. Gay Ann Rogers' class is open, which means she allows auditors like me, but most classes are not. To participate in the class you will either audit the class for a small fee if you have the design already but want to sit through class again to help motivate you to finish it, or you will pay the full teaching fee and buy your kit either through the teacher or gather supplies yourself, depending on how that teacher structures that class.
Now! Hope this all makes more sense.
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
