As you can see, I've started the last of the six pet guardian angels (designed by Kandace Merric) for the ANG Auction this fall at their Milwaukee Seminar Auction. You can see a photo of the original model on the left if you are here via the Blogspot address. We already have several beautiful rabbits in colors close to the original so I went for a monochromatic color scheme, thinking that I would use texture to make this a subtle and elegant piece.
The skirt is a bargello type stitch done in overdyed silk floss from Gloriana. The color is #169 Old Gold. The accent metallic is Kreinik's new 002V which is a mix of gold and copper. When you put this color with Kreinik's other golds, it looks copper. When you try to put it with the coppers, it looks gold! I like how the two shades are similar but there's enough color contrast for this to be interesting, instead of blah. I was afraid a regular gold wouldn't stand out enough from the gold overdye, so I think this was a good choice.
The bodice is couched Lorikeet (also from Gloriana, color Lacquered Gold this time). Lorikeet is a 9 ply wool and this color is overdyed and slightly darker than the Old Gold silk. I used a lighter gold in silk floss from Kreinik-their Silk Mori. The color is 0923. This is a faded shade from their Milk Paint color set.
The sleeve is in two parts. The outer sleeve uses the same stitch as the bodice but I changed the inner sleeve design and am stitching it in skip tent using two plies of my Silk Mori. More about that tomorrow. Right now I want to talk about the stitch on the bodice and upper sleeve. I told you it was just the Lorikeet (3 plies) couched down with the Silk Mori (2 plies) but I didn't say the original model uses diagonal mosaic slanted two different ways for the bodiee and the sleeve. Diagonal Mosaic is one of the stitches on ANG's website.
http://www.needlepoint.org/StitchOfTheMonth/2000/00-07.php
I wanted to emphasize the textures of my threads, so I came up with a couched version of diagonal mosaic, that couched a line of Lorikeet with only the short stitches, then the next row in only the long stitches. This way you can see the Lorikeet under the couching lighter Silk Mori.
When you have a specific effect in mind, you can often tinker with the recommended stitch to stay in the design's ballpark, but still do what you want with the threads.
Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
