Color Palette Generators

You may have noticed that Orna Willis is posting about color on her blog. She chooses a skein of overdyed thread and analyzes the colors in it with color palette tools, then posts a photo of the original with the bars of color pulled from it on her website.

http://ornadesign.blogspot.com/

She's using software that analyzes photos. This is also available for you to use at home. Here is an online tool that allows you to upload a photo from your computer. It will pull the colors from it for you in fairly great detail. Push the Browse button to find an image on your computer, then push Create to get an idea of the colors in it. I used the portrait of Kaffee Fassett above to pull out fifteen shades of purples and corals (but the blue of his t-shirt was ignored) from the photo.

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/colors.php

This color tool pulls ten colors from a website image URL but arranges them into five Vibrant and five Subdued shades. Paste your URL into the box and then push Color-Palette-ify. Again, the blue of his shirt was ignored. These tools seem to pull only the most prominent colors.

http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/

Why is this important? Those of you trying to choose colors for Tony Minieri's Glittering Kimono design on the ANG website can pick either an online photo whose colors you love (the Degraeve color palette tool) or one saved to your computer (the Big Huge Lab color palette tool), and discover just what colors made up the image. Then you can go looking for an overdye and solid colors in your stash to match and create your version of this charted design.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Belated Birthday Wishes

Yesterday was President's Day, the combined birthday holiday for government employees to celebrate Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays. I meant to post about it yesterday but ran out of time. After all, most Americans don't have this day off work and I had other things to occupy me. So here's a belated Happy Birthday to both Presidents.

Petei has small Abe and George & Martha Washington canvases plus several non-Presidental but patriotic designs. http://www.petei.com/line_list/line_july_4th.htm

The artist Richard Saja has stitched Young Mr. Lincoln. He's doing a series of embroideries on toile fabrics which you can see in part if you explore his blog.
http://historically-inaccurate.blogspot.com/2009/02/young-mr-lincoln.html

Enjoy!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Peacock Lovers Alert

Many of us revisit the same themes over and over in our stitching. Perhaps we love Christmas, so that's all we stitch (or maybe we have so many grandkids we are a stocking factory). Or maybe we love Asian designs so we stitch kimonos, geishas, temples and koi (that would be me). Or maybe, just maybe, we love to stitch peacocks.

If you are a peacock lover, have I found the blog for you!
http://peacockstitchalong.blogspot.com/

By the way, the photo above is my Shorebirds peacock I stitched last year. He's just magnificent!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Stephen at Rittenhouse Has a Problem

Thanks to the Stitching Sisters' blog I know there is a new shop in Philadelphia called Rittenhouse Needlepoint (only 6-7 hours away--can you say Road Trip?!). Denise and Linda were just there and had a great deal of fun.
http://nystitchingsisters.blogspot.com/2009/02/our-most-recent-excellent-adventure.html

Here is the shop's website. There are a ton of canvases and many books and tools to browse.
http://stores.rittenhouseneedlepoint.net/StoreFront.bok

Rittenhouse also has started a blog. In it Stephen, the shop's co-owner, describes a problem with his lovely Susan Treglown koi piece. All the color changes and constant stopping/starting threads is hard for him to cope with. I posted an idea or two to the blog to help him. Head over, read about the shop and Stephen's koi canvas, and see if you can come up with more tips to help him cope.
http://rittenhouseneedlepoint.blogspot.com/2009/02/welcome.html

I love hearing about new needlepoint stores. We can never have enough places to shop!

By the way, the canvas above is called Dinner at the Rittenhouse. The shop owners are the guys huddled there to the right of the potted plant, obviously worried that they are going to run out of champagne (not to mention thread) with all of us visiting the shop simultaneously. LOL

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

February 2009 Chilly Hollow Newsletter Article

Sometimes it seems like winter lasts forever in Chilly Hollow. If you feel the same way, this month's newsletter article is for you because I'm going to talk about stitching flowers.

First, the eye candy--here is a silk and metal embroidery sampler from Jane in the U.K. with a lovely floral center. Click on the little picture to see the whole thing. Gorgeous!
http://www.newblehome.co.uk/embroidery/page.html

When you have flowers, you need butterflies, right? This comes from Carol-Anne, also in the U.K. She's a very talented practitioner of Japanese Embroidery.
http://threadsacrosstheweb.blogspot.com/2009/02/travelling-books-introduction...

Now that your fingers are itching to stitch Spring, how about learning a new technique? Needle'n Thread to the rescue! Here is Mary Corbet, explaining Or Nue. She makes it look easy.
http://www.needlenthread.com/2009/01/or-nue-goldwork-in-color.html

Mary also posted two fascinating articles on her blog about needle painting, which is a technique from crewel embroidery that uses long and short stitch (mostly) to create beautifully shaded flowers. The first article demonstrates how much better needle painting looks when stitched in one thread instead of two. Remember, the flowers that Margaret stitched are done in crewel wool. You may not get the same results when you are stitching with silk or cotton or rayon, but reducing the number of plies may well help you if you are not happy with how your needle painting looks.
http://www.needlenthread.com/2009/01/when-less-is-more-in-thread-painting.html

The next day Mary followed up with a tip from Trish Burr, who is one of the pre-eminent practitioners of needle painting alive (the other being Helen Stevens). You may find this useful when you next try needle painting.
http://www.needlenthread.com/2009/01/thread-painting-tips-follow-up.html

Finally, more eye candy. If you haven't seen Trish Burr's website, what are you waiting for?!!!
http://www.trishburr.co.za/

And if you aren't familiar with Helen, here's a Gallery of her work from her site. Amazing! Is it just me, or is Mother Nature an endless source of beauty and inspiration for us needle artists?
http://www.fritillary.co.uk/hmsslideshow/hmsportfolio.html

Here's to Spring!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow