While stitching the endless background on the Rabbit Geisha, I've been thinking about managing transitions. Sounds like a management phrase, doesn't it? "Managing transitions...."
What I mean by this is how to make the background meet the central figure in such a way as it all looks good. The first hint that this is important on this canvas came when the background stitch between the Rabbit Geisha's ears looked odd. Above is how I managed this area by turning the odd space between the ears into all tent stitches in the background thread. If you look carefully at the left side of her neck, you will see a few tent stitches there, too.
You'll also see a few unstitched areas on the right beside her nose. I'm still thinking over what to do there. I'll probably stitch longer horizontal stitches right over the shorter ones.
There are other transitional areas on this canvas. In the photo above, there is a small space between two pink ribbons just under the sleeve, a larger space between the ribbons and the side of her robe, and another space between the pink ribbons a bit further toward the bottom of the canvas. In these areas I was able to compensate my split pavilion stitches and they looked good. I am not sure why compensation here looks fine and between the rabbit ears doesn't, but it may be because the space between the ears is angled, not a straight vertical area.
It is more difficult to pick out, but there are transitional spaces all along the bottom of the hem where the navy tent stitches meet the background stitches. There is actually a channel left blank between the split pavilion stitches in the background and the navy tent stitch outline of the hem but you can't see it well. In these cases you have to experiment to see whether to leave an unstitched area. Look at the pavilion stitch between the two tassels. In that one area I put a stitch in the blank space. See how crowded it looks and how it bleeds over into the navy tent stitch? I will pull this out before I go any further but I wanted you to see the difference between leaving an empty space and filling it.
So what do you do in these areas to make the place where the background meets other stitches look good? There are always ways around the problem and the Rabbit Geisha shows several: compensate, leave a blank space, use tent stitches instead. I recommend you just try out a variety of strategies and rip out the ones that don't work.
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
