Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Shoulder Pads and Japanese Quilting

Luna from Leigh Designs' Ladies of the Night Series
I hoped to have both of Luna's shoulders done this morning but I didn't finish the purple folds on the right side last night.  The shoulders are both painted with gray and purple shading but I am stitching all the crease lines in purple.  I thought two colors for the fold lines was a bit much considering what I was doing with this design so I am only using a dark purple on the black cloak.  (I may use a bit of gray thread in back stitching to differentiate the different black areas at the end. Or I may not.)  You'll see I haven't done the bangs or her jewelry yet, either.  That fun stuff has to wait until I have both shoulders and bangs finished.

In other news, Barbara mentioned this Flickr album full of Japanese quilts from the 2011 Tokyo quilt show.  (Navigate using the arrow at the right of the little thumbnail photos.) The colors are amazing.  Shows like this help me pick colors for geometric pieces.  I choose a piece I particularly like and pull colors from it.  It is sort of like picking a skein of Watercolours that appeals and then going with the colors incorporated in the overdyed cotton skein, but the range of colors shown at the quilt show is much greater than the 200-250 that Caron uses currently.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22514067@N00/5393169351/in/set-72157625919155444/

Thanks for the tip, Barbara!

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

9 comments:

Elaine said...

She is looking lovely.

I do like the effect on the edge of her hood.

Umm ..... as someone from the UK, when you say you haven't done the 'bangs' ..... what are you referring to .... I'm almost afraid to ask as it sounds suspiciously like 'bangers' which has a specific meaning in the UK .... but if that is what you mean, that's fine with me!! :P

The Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure said...

Elaine, sorry to confuse you. In U.S. English, "bangs" refers to the short trimmed hair over her eyes. Is it "fringe" to you?

I don't mean sausages!

Elaine said...

Ahhh yes .... her fringe. I understand now!

No, I wasn't referring to sausages but the UK use of bangers as a vulgar reference to her chest which I also noticed looked unstitched!!

[blush] Not that I thought you would ever be vulgar :)

And we thought we were speaking the same language :)

Elaine said...

In fact .... I have just increased the magnification and can now see that her chest has been stitched.

I think it is I that deserves a slap for reading it the wrong way :(

She is still very lovely though and I am enjoying seeing the progress you are making with her.

Rachel said...

Yes, in the UK, that's a fringe.

It's going to be interesting to see Luna with all her different blacks in different threads. You realise she'll have to be very well-lit when she's framed, don't you?

The Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure said...

Elaine, communication is hard even when you are talking to someone from your own country, or your own region even! So don't worry about not understanding me.

Always enlarge the photos if you can for Luna. There are a lot of details that are hard to see because of the black on black design. This is why I wanted to stitch her--to learn to differentiate all that black.

The Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure said...

Luna is a gift so I won't have control over where she is hung but I'll recommend one of these--
http://www.lampsplus.com/products/picture-lights/

NCPat said...

Nice work Jane! I am still chuckling over the bangs!

The Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure said...

I thought I was running a clean program here and discovered--to my horror--I was grossing out the British contingent!

Elaine kindly set me straight. It's fringe, folks, that stuff covering her eyes!