As I talked about yesterday, I finished the backstitched black lines around O'jishi's mouth and jaw and stitched more embellishing stitches between the round balloon shapes on his jaw in coral and cream. I thought about adding brown horizontal stitches at the top of each jaw but decided that would make that area too dark. The dark brown paint already shows well under the gold balloon stitches. I decided this morning I need to add a bit more of the coral color to the right side of his jaw tonight. The color needs to come down a bit more.
I also did vertical jaw stitches in dark brown inside and parallel to the dark black back stitches. These were also done in two plies of my brown Gloriana silk. To finish the jaw, I did backstitch with one ply of the same brown silk along the bottom of his chin. To add definition without making the line heavier, I then whipped the back stitches. If you haven't seen whipped backstitch, here is how it is done. Refer to yesterday's information on how to do backstitches if you need to.
http://www.needlenthread.com/2006/11/whipped-backstitch-video-tutorial.html
Whipping one ply of brown silk with another ply of brown silk raises the thin line a bit. I like how it looks enough to use the same technique on the coral red curves to the outside left or right of each of his eyes. I used one ply to backstitch and to whip the backstitches there, too.
Questions?
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
