Yesterday's mail brought a special treat--a shipment of Gloriana threads from Needle in a Haystack. I ordered three of the new 2009 colors sight unseen, thinking I would use one for ANG's Stitch of the Month (SOTM) program. Hey! It's a kimono design by Tony Mineiri! What's not to like!?!!!
http://www.needlepoint.org/Stitch.php
The photo above is my new skeins. From the top down they are Green Tea (a lovely very pale yellowish green), Peacock Green (not new but I'll explain what it is doing there in a minute), Old Gold (a lovely faded gold that is more elegant gold than harvest gold) and Peacock which I've unwound to show all the colors. As you can see Peacock runs from terracotta to mauve to violet to purple to blue to teal blue to green to yellow-green to olive green. This is a very good overdye to pick colors from because there are so many shades to choose from.
The reaason Peacock Green is in the photo is that before I unwound my new skein of Peacock, I thought Peacock Green matched the color of green in Peacock. But once I opened my skein and looked at it, Peacock Green is too Kelly Green to look good with the greens in Peacock. I also didn't realize there was so much terracotta or see any olive green or yellow in the skein until I opened it. You really can't judge what an overdyed thread is really like until you unwide the skein and take a good look, so don't pick your colors if you are working from an overdye until you can actually see the overdye colors laid out for you untwisted from the skein.
Now that I have Peacock as my overdye for my Glittering Kimono project, I have to pick three colors from the skein. Tony Minieri describes the types of thread I need thusly:
Color A--one stranded silk, one Vineyard Classic, a Fyre Works Soft Sheen, one color of Kreinik in #8 and also in #16 braid, and a blending filament or Accentuate. Because I am working my design on 24 count congress cloth, not the 18 count NP canvas called for in the design, I am going to have to use smaller sizes or fewer plies. Right now I have a sranded silk, a skein of Impressions, a Fyre Works Soft Sheen, and two Kreinik colors, both in #4 braid, and an Accentuate.
Color B--one stranded silk, one Vineyard Classic, a Fyre Works Soft Sheen, a Mandarin floss to match the color of the background canvas (I'm using ecru congress cloth), and a #12 braid. I have a stranded silk, a skein of Impressions (and a card of silk perle), a Fyre Works Soft Sheen, a card of Mandarin floss in ecru, and a spool of #4 Kreinik. I might use Impressions one place and the silk perle another, depending on the stitches. I probably will double the #4 Kreinik and make it the size of #8 since #12 Kreinik is probably a bit large on congress cloth.
Color C--two shades of stranded silk, a spool of # 12 Kreinik and one of # 16 Kreinik in the same color, and Accentuate. Again, I'm going with a smaller size of Kreinik (I have two shades of #4 but haven't decided which I'll use) and have two shades (a dark and a medium) of Color C. I may use my #12 braid in Color B instead of doubling up my #4 Kreinik.
Can you tell this will be a work in progress? LOL
I deliberately didn't mention the colors I choose to use from my Peacock overdye. I pulled all the thread types I could find in all the colors listed above (from terracotta to olive green) and then eliminated the ones I didn't have much variety in. I ended up with mauve pink, plum purple and blue and matched what threads I had to the requirements again. Since I had two pretty plum shades of silk I made that Color C. Color B ended up being blue since I had a #12 braid in blue that looked good with my silk and Impressions. So Color A is the soft pink by default. With some manipulation (my Accentuate is between mauve and pink so I'll use the same color for Color A and C) I think I can do this without buying any more threads.
I hope those of you stitching this are encouraged by my not having exactly what I needed and making do. You can also. Some of us don't have shops nearby and some of us are trying to be thrifty but we all can study with Tony if we think about thread requirements and what substitutes will work.
By the way, ANG is trying to get a charted version of Tony's kimono outline to post on the website. Hopefully this will work out so that those who are very frustrated with tracing a design from a pattern that has to be enlarged can participate in this fascinating program.
Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
