Wednesday, February 14, 2018

When to Compensate and When to Not Compensate

Melissa Prince's Japan Travel Coaster

I'm currently stitching the mountain in the background of the "Japan Travel Coaster" from Melissa Prince Designs.  Working on the mountain brings up an interesting point—how to handle compensation between areas when you are using the same stitch for them all.  I'm stitching the mountain using the same stitch, but changing threads as the colors of the mountain change.  When I finished, I ended up with this—


Mountain Stitched
Take a closer look a the area where the burgundy turns into pink and the pink turns into white.  The stitches in burgundy reach up into the pink area.  I did not compensate the edges of that area.  I think in most cases it is better to continue the stitch rhythm instead of shortening a stitch to stop that color at the edge.  However, I did compensate the white area at the top of the mountain somewhat where it will bleed into the sky since I'm going to use a different stitch for the sky.  I also compensated somewhat at the white-pink edge as the change from a medium dark pink to white is pretty drastic.  I really didn't need to do that, however, as I ended up putting beads on top of the white-pink edge to create clouds and snow on Mt. Fuji.  The beads hide any compensation I did or did not do.


Margins Hidden by Beads
Compensation is an interesting topic.  I usually don't compensate between areas as I think it is more important to continue the stitch rhythm, but there are lots of exceptions to that rule.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright January 15, 2018 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.

2 comments:

NCPat said...

It looks great. There are a lot of ways to compensate or not! You chose wisely.

The Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure said...

Thanks!