While stitching the endless background on the Rabbit Geisha, I've been thinking about managing transitions. Sounds like a management phrase, doesn't it? "Managing transitions...."
What I mean by this is how to make the background meet the central figure in such a way as it all looks good. The first hint that this is important on this canvas came when the background stitch between the Rabbit Geisha's ears looked odd. Above is how I managed this area by turning the odd space between the ears into all tent stitches in the background thread. If you look carefully at the left side of her neck, you will see a few tent stitches there, too.
You'll also see a few unstitched areas on the right beside her nose. I'm still thinking over what to do there. I'll probably stitch longer horizontal stitches right over the shorter ones.
There are other transitional areas on this canvas. In the photo above, there is a small space between two pink ribbons just under the sleeve, a larger space between the ribbons and the side of her robe, and another space between the pink ribbons a bit further toward the bottom of the canvas. In these areas I was able to compensate my split pavilion stitches and they looked good. I am not sure why compensation here looks fine and between the rabbit ears doesn't, but it may be because the space between the ears is angled, not a straight vertical area.
It is more difficult to pick out, but there are transitional spaces all along the bottom of the hem where the navy tent stitches meet the background stitches. There is actually a channel left blank between the split pavilion stitches in the background and the navy tent stitch outline of the hem but you can't see it well. In these cases you have to experiment to see whether to leave an unstitched area. Look at the pavilion stitch between the two tassels. In that one area I put a stitch in the blank space. See how crowded it looks and how it bleeds over into the navy tent stitch? I will pull this out before I go any further but I wanted you to see the difference between leaving an empty space and filling it.
So what do you do in these areas to make the place where the background meets other stitches look good? There are always ways around the problem and the Rabbit Geisha shows several: compensate, leave a blank space, use tent stitches instead. I recommend you just try out a variety of strategies and rip out the ones that don't work.
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
6 comments:
Hi Jane,
Between the pink ribbons on the second row, right side from the bottom, it looks like you missed a blue stitch. Cannot tell if you missed one in the row above this one as well.......of course, could totally be my eye site playing games on me
Thanks, Patt. I'll check. It's probably an area where the gold edging bends. I deliberately didn't cover that area as my gold tent stitches will go there.
But I'll check the canvas. I found the missing stitches below the nose are actually there. They just don't show for some reason in the photograph.
I could see the missing stitches below his nose, and btw, excellent tips!
NCPat's brought up an interesting point about being able to see the missing stitches below the nose, but in real life, they are there. (More photo magic, I guess.) They are very small horizontal stitches over one thread which were compensated, which brings up another point. When do you compensate and make a stitch slightly longer instead of doing two stitches, one regular sized and one smaller. Often compensating looks better but not always.
Thanks for the compliment, Pat. I ended up stitching over the tiny stitch and it seems more visible now.
jane, i love your work, and all your advice, and while i'm reluctant to ask this question, because it's "hindsight", i'm curious to know what you think. IF (i don't like that word, either), but IF you had started the background of the split pavilion stitches in the middle of her ears, would you have been able to keep the design through the area, or would it have been the same issue requiring tent stitches? also, what is your thinking on beginning the background, first? needlepointers had an article on it sometime ago, and it's one i've had to re-learn over and over. i'm always so eager to get to the design, that i don't consider the background, but just a time consuming chore. what is your thinking on beginning the background, first? your work and needlepoint wisdom is admired by me for more years, than i can remember--waving hello from the atlantic seashore--lbk
Hello LBK! Thanks for your kind words. They cheered me up this dreary dark rainy morning.
SF Sunset asked a similar question after another Managing Transitions entry: How about stitching the background first and then the ears on top? It would work and make the split pavilions a bit easier to count out, but I am not sure that the area would look any better. The split pavilion transition fell in an awkward place between the ears so that there were tiny stitches compensated on either side of the dividing line. I think that is why it looked so bad that I pulled it out and replaced it with tent stitches. The ears are angled and all my other compensation areas are either straight lines or ovals so the split pavilion stitch looked better inside those shapes.
So although it might work, I have some doubts based on the shape of the background we have here.
As for when to do backgrounds, folks have told me they were taught to do it last and I've been told by stitchers I respect to do it first. I don['t think it matters in most cases. I like to work from background to foreground because that makes sense to me (and in some cases you must because the design has something in the background that will have to be overstitched by the foreground or you have a lot of white and then dark colors you want to be sure don't get fuzz on each other), but I don't think it matters. Do what makes sense to you.
Backgrounds seem endless, so another reason to at least start them first is you can switch back and forth between the boring background and the more interesting foreground parts.
Bottom line: I believe in most cases it doesn't matter which you do first.
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