Cat Topiary Garden Thread Dye Lot Problem and Solutions

Problem Area

Despite my having two partial spools of Trebizond Silver 953 here in CH, I ran out of this medium silver color while working the right hand cat statue. I called up the local shop that I knew stocks Trebizond and ordered a spool (plus some other goodies I'll report on later) and it arrived Saturday. Hurrah!

Sadly, the dye lots had changed substantially and all of a sudden Silver 953 was much darker.  In the photo above, the right leg is the original Silver 953 while the left leg is the new spool of Silver 953.  The circled area is where I mixed threads to get by.  See my problem?  I've never had this issue with Trebizond before but some threads (I'm looking at YOU, Watercolours!) are notorious for dyelot changes.  This is why you always should buy plenty of thread.  However, with two partial spools and not that much area to cover, I thought I'd be ok.  Much of the second cat statue was done in half cross stitch, by the way, which uses much less thread than the basketweave of the left cat statue.  I still ran out, though, and ended up with two shades of silver. So I did what any stitcher would do--I rummaged through my stash. I had a similar silver in Presencia perle cotton but it didn't have the sheen of the silk Trebizond and didn't look right.  I did have Trebizond 951 which is very light silver, however.  So I plied the light 951 and the dark 953 and experimented to see what mix of plies got me closest to the original 953.  I ended up stitching the rest of the right cat statue with two plies of 951 and one of 953.  If I worked carefully so that the 953 showed more than the 951, it came close to the original 953 color.

Can I get by with this?

It is not perfect but it is ok.  There are things I can do to minimize the color difference.  I can put a few lines of darker grey on top of the legs to do shading.  That will minimize the color differences.  I could create a blooming vine to climb up the problem left leg and shoulder. That will also fool the eye which will look at the vine, not the leg.  If the cats were supposed to be real cats, not statues, I might try brushing the threads to make them fuzzy, which would also hide the color change.  But for now I'm tent stitching the green leaves around the cat statues' feet and working on the small cat topiary in the background while I think all this over.  Anyone else have ideas on hiding dye lot changes?


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