Because I've been thinking so much lately about managing transitions between various stitches on the Rabbit Geisha, I pulled out photographs of a project I stitched several years ago that had the same transitional issues but for a different reason.
The image above is my version of Shorebird Designs' small peacock M274. This is a 5x7 design on 18 count canvas. You can find it on Katie Molineaux's website by using the Katie's Search function on the left side of the page. By the way, I urge you to look at the Stitched By Customers' Section. Amazing stitching there!
http://shorebirdstudio.com/
The reason I'm using this design to talk about transitions is that it was all done in light coverage stitches. The background and leaves are one ply of silk. I stitched those first and then was faced with the issue of choosing stitches for the bird that didn't look too heavy next to the almost not there background.
Here is a close-up of the design to help you understand what I did. First, I decided to use plyable threads so I could cut down on bulk when I stitched the bird. The tent stitches on the bird's face are two plies of either silk or overdyed cotton flosses. The tiny bullions on the top of his head were done with one ply of overdyed or solid colored silks. The French knots on the peacock's topknot were all in two plies. I think I mixed in the thin metallic thread Accentuate occasionally here to add a bit of shine. The upright brick stitches on the body were all carefully laid silks using two plies, with one strand of Accentuate laid on top in places to add sparkle.
Overall, reducing the number of plies on this piece worked well to integrate the bird with its background. Of course this piece used either slanting or straight stitches, which made the blending of background and image easier. I would have had more trouble is this piece included compound stitches made up of many layers like the fancy stitches on the Rabbit Geisha's kimono top.
I hope this gives you some strategies for managing the transitions between the foreground and background stitches on your painted canvases. I'd love to hear other strategies folks use in the Comments! I am certain I don't know all the ways to get around this problem.
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
4 comments:
Jane,
I know that you will take a color picture of the canvas and work from it at times. I wonder what the space between the ears would have looked like if you had first stitched the background stitch all the way across where the ears are and then went back and stitched the ears on top of the background stitch? Would you have to use fewer plies in the background? Would the ears stand out too much from the head?
Those ditches between transistions irk me for some reason. I don't have a solution for them, but hope the painted canvas thread compensates enough so others don't see it.
Good comment, SFSunset. It may well be that working the background right on top of the ears, then using my color copy to know where to stitch bunny ears would have made the split pavilions look better. It was hard to count out the correct placement with the ears there first. But you are right. I think the background's lying under the ears would make the ears a bit too prominent. I could have used three plies instead of four for the split pavilions but laying the threads would have been even more important (and laying that much background is a pain!) and I also think made the transition ditches visible. With four plies, the thread plumps up and hides the empty ditch between that split pavilion and my kimono stitches.
Thanks for pointing this out. I knew there were transition techniques I hadn't thought of!
For your Shorebird - what stitch did you use for the green trees/flowers? How did you get good coverage just using one strand?
Anon, I didn't get good coverage at all using the random long stitches that just covered the green leaf shapes. That was the point. This piece is beautifully painted on 18 count canvas, so I decided I would let some of the paint show to shade and enhance the canvas. All of the stitches were lighter coverage than normal, from the two plies of floss for the tent stitches on the head, to the one ply of silk for the French knots and bullions, to the one ply in the purple and green background. Quite a bit of the green shading shows on the leaves and it really makes this piece prettier than if I had used the more normal 4-6 plies.
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