Too Hot? Too Cold? Just Right!

I like to start with the background of each piece of needlepoint I stitch.  Other folks always start with the center of a design, or start at the upper right corner (or lower left corner), etc.  I don't think there is a right or wrong place to start unless you have areas you really have to stitch first.  (An example of that would be areas of white and black when you would want to do the dark area before the white so that you wouldn't get fuzz from one onto the other or have dragged threads on the back showing.)  There are other logical reasons that will mean you have to start elsewhere, but normally I start with the background of a piece.  It just works for me to do so.

So the first thing I need to figure out on my O'jishi lion mask is the background stitch or stitches.  Which stitch you use is partly governed by the threads you use, so I picked four threads to try out.  I choose dark and light milk chocolate colors that match the background symbol's shade:  Mandarin Floss (milk chocolate mixed with cream #M879), Splendor silk (dark milk chocolate #S928), Gloriana overdyed silk Milk Chocolate #170 and Gloriana overdyed silk Coffee Bean #166.

You can see how these threads look in this photo of one of my first test stitchings.  The stitch above is Bamboo Stitch, step one.  (Step two adds horizontal bars at the top of each pair of long and short stitches.  This stitch is from More Stitches for Effect, page 31)  On the right side you see Mandarin Floss (light milk chocolate) and Splendor (dark milk chocolate).  On the left in the V shape of the symbol you see the two Gloriana overdyes.  The lighter section of the symbol is Milk Chocolate and the darker areas are Coffee Bean.

I decided that the overdyes did not add much to the symbol although I think very often if you use a slightly lighter or darker shade of the background color you can add depth and interest to a design.  I decided to go with the Mandarin Floss and Splendor Silk when it came to color.  I used two plies of each.  This is a 13 count canvas but even two plies laid carefully cover pretty well and I did want some of the background color to show through the threads.  A light coverage stitch will not overwhelm the mask, which is important.

Now that I've chosen threads, what about a stitch?   I did not like how Bamboo Stitch looked and ripped it out.  When it comes to choosing a stitch, I normally use the shape I have to fill as a starting point.  In other words, if you are stitching a round circle, look for a stitch that is round.  (It's a useful guideline but not a fast rule so don't tattoo this on your forehead, ok?)  In this instance I am not going to find a stitch that is shaped like the background symbol.  So I decided I would look at stitches that echo Asian themes like bamboo or willow or Chinese lanterns.  Which is why I started with Bamboo Stitch.

But Bamboo Stitch violates an important rule of design--the scale is wrong.  This is a big piece with large sections and the Bamboo Stitch just looks too small and fussy for O'jishi.  I could try to elongate the stitch and also widen it but I decided to try something else.  Here are the next two background stitches I auditioned.

The stitch at the bottom is called Diagonal Hungarian (More Stitches for Effect, page 33).  I thought initially that This Was It.  The scale is ok and it makes the background look woven, which is appropriate for a mask hanging on a wall covered in reed mats.  But in the end this stitch didn't grab me and I kept trying.

The stitch in the upper right is my third attempt.  This is a stitch I made up based on Goofy Stitch from the Little Shoppe of Stitches' website.  They have a Stitch of the Month section there.  Note that Goofy Stitch is supposed to be done in two colors, which isn't really appropriate here as I want to switch colors only when stitching the symbol instead of the background.  So I took the idea of a diagonal row of stitches over 6 threads alternating with 6 rows of diagonal stitches over 2 threads and created Goofy Six By Six stitch.  The plan was to alternate the direction of the main large row to echo the slants of the symbol in the background, and then fill in with 6 rows of the smaller size between the various large rows.
http://store.littleshoppeofstitches.com/gojustofmo.html

I like this stitch and it would be great on the perfect canvas, but in the end I decided that it was too dramatic and took attention away from the central design without properly emphasizing the symbol.  So I tried again.

My fourth attempt is on the left side of this photo.  It is an unnamed cashmere stitch variation used as the background stitch for Melissa Shirley's red flower purse.  It's charted in the July-August 2009 NP Now magazine but here's a photo of the finished purse.
http://www.needlepointnow.com/back_issues/2009/2009_07/2009_07_back_cover.html

See?  You do a pair of cashmere rectangles separated by an empty thread row, then do another pair oriented differently. After the pairs are stitched, you come back and tent stitch all the empty rows.  The purse uses two threads, one for the cashmere rectangle pairs and one for tent stitches separating each pair.  Right now I am undecided whether I will stitch those tent stitches or not.  I'll look at my stash of threads today and see if anything seems to have a different enough texture to be useful here.  I may just leave the tent stitch row empty.

I like how the cashmere pairs look on this canvas.  They echo the symbol shape and are vaguely Asian in feel without drawing too much attention away from the mask.  They are not easy to compensate when you have to switch colors and I do have to lay my two plies for each stitch but the right background makes or breaks a piece, so all the effort is worth it to me.

I have a lot of background to do so I'll probably talk about other things this week as I stitch it.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
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