The Hair of the Pumpkin

Leigh Design's Miko, Hair Step One

As long time readers of Blog know, I like realistic painted canvas designs and often choose a stitch by thinking about what something looks like in real life, then finding a stitch and thread combo that mimic how that object actually appears.  You probably have read all about my thought process for stitching a painted canvas on an article ANG put on their website.
http://www.needlepoint.org/FAQ/phobia.php

This isn't the only way to proceed, however, especially if the canvas you choose isn't realistic.  A friend mentioned in passing that she needed to remember realistic stitches aren't always the best choice for a canvas.  That got me thinking.  I'd seen this finished piece (stitched by Emily Sobol) and knew I wanted to use the stitches on the sides of the pumpkin for Miko's hair.
http://stitcherie.ning.com/photo/3810047:Photo:51810?context=user

This is a stitch called Staggered Mosaic, which is basically a row of mosaic stitches separated by a wide row of slanted stitches.  It is not at all what real hair looks like, but I thought it was a beautiful stitch that would look great on the Miko canvas.  The design will read "geisha" no matter how I stitch the hair so I went with this stitch, mixing Kreinik metallic with Vineyard black silk for the maximum contrast between the two rows of stitches that make up Staggered Mosaic.

The pumpkin has a sort of brick stitch with two sizes in the center but that wouldn't work for Miko. See how her head is tilted?  A straight stitch is going to look odd down at the hairline because of the tilt.  I wanted a diagonal stitch which would look more normal with the tilting of the head  I went through all my stitching books, looking for variations on mosaic stitch.  I found Reverse Mosaic, tried it with my two threads, and it was perfect.  It is slightly smaller in scale than Staggered Mosaic because the spaces between the metallic mosaic stitches is narrower.  But that seems to look ok here.  I could have used the same Staggered Mosaic over Miko's forehead that I used on the rest of her hair, but somehow it seemed to me that a slight variation was called for here.

Of course all this is in black with black metallics so it doesn't show up well in photos.  That's why I did step one only before taking the photos.  The nape of her neck has most of step two put in.  You really can't see what's going on there because there isn't much contrast in the photos. Metallics don't photograph well.  I still have to put the highlight stitches in over her hair but I will do that later.  I need to get busy with cat topiary garden again.

The hair is really another background stitch, which I hope will show off the hair ornaments well.  I'll be thinking about them while I stitch something else.

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