2nd Rainbow

I have finally got around to going back and having another go at shading through a rainbow. This time I used two shades of each colour to try to get better matches when changing colours. Here is the outcome:

Green to yellow is still a problem. The only way to do it effectively seems to be to pick very light colours but then the pattern doesn't show up. Also, by sorting the transition between yellow and orange the problem has simply been moved along a bit to red/orange. Possibly it could be done if I bought a set of colours specifically rather than relying on what I already have but I'm not sure. I think to have a truly smooth transition you would have to use too many thread colours for it to be practical. But do the transitions have to be smooth? In most practical situations, rather than these shading experiments, you would want a change in colours to be noticeable. I'll have to think some more.

Green leaf

To go with the flower and continue practicing coloured shading I tried sewing a leaf. Unfortunately it didn't really work very well.

The central stem is 2 threads while the rest is done with 1 so it ends up standing out too much.
The way it was shaded attempted to show the way leafs curve but I didn't get the pattern right.
And the colours are too bright. In trying to make the lightest colour show against the fabric I ended up selecting a group of thread shades that were a bit too like primary colours.

On the other hand what doing this piece emphasised was how difficult it is to keep the pattern going properly where you are only sewing very small sections of a certain type of thread then moving on. The picture below shows one length of the darkest thread complete and I have started the next colour but discovered that I had made a mistake at one point and got the pattern wrong.

Where the two colour meet you can just see that a diagonal square is formed because I had missed out a stitch of darker green when I was breaking the pattern up. I had to unpick a lot of what I had done to fix it. In future I will use shorted lengths of thread when there will be little fiddly sections but I will also try stopping one thread before the end, parking it, and catching up with the next before moving on (a technique I have seen referenced but never tried so I'm not quite sure how it works).

Pink flower

To practice less structured colour shading I have done a five petaled flower using the same stitch pattern throughout. Here are the threads and pattern:

Obviously the outline is very stylised but I wanted a clear shape that could be made interesting through the use of shading. I used a slightly simplified form of the third blue shading experiment using only two thicknesses of thread. The darkest colour is 2 strands and the lightest is 1 strand. The mid tone appears in both thicknesses to graduate between them. Here is the finished result:

The problem with using a light colour is that when the thread is very thin the colour is even more muted and appears almost the same as the background fabric. The lightest edges can be differentiated more by a change in texture from the background than by a change in colour. I do like the shading within the petals though where the lines of darker colour come out from the centre. Looking at it from a distance the edges stand out more clearly and it appears generally more interesting than it does close up.

I like how delicate the very pale edges make it appear but I think using a slightly darker tone would have worked better. It is just going to be difficult to work out how dark the lightest colour should be.

Opposite shading

I kind of wondered what would happen if you shaded in the opposite direction, with thicker threads for light colours and thinner for dark. The answer is not very much:

but I suppose at least I know that now.

Blackwork Bellydancer - Design

While I am still playing with coloured experiments I figured I would start designing my first proper blackwork image so that I have plenty of time to think about it. I already have a piece of fabric that is the same size as the one I am doing the current experiments on which is square and about 14 inches wide. Therefore I intend to design an image that is approximately 10 inches square. I want to stick predominantly with black thread at the moment but am considering using some gold as a contrast.

I am a belly dancer and it would be really nice to combine my two hobbies in this piece so I have looked through my photographs to find a simple shape that I can take as a model. These are what I came up with:

The shape of the dancers back provides a simple but easily recognisable image and the fabric of the hip scarf and skirt provide interest. The first of the two is the more dramatic so I decided to start with that. I transformed it into black and white, heightened the contrast slightly to emphasise the different tones, then drew lines over the edges and where the most obvious shading should go:

To make the image stronger I shortened the hip scarf and raised the bottom edge of the top to show more of the back of the waist. I then created a new, square, document and copied the outlines across so that I could decide what layout the final image should have. Finally I blocked in some shading:

Cropping the image in tighter to the waist hightens the impact by emphasising the body's curve and I really like this as an idea. Gold thread could be included by adding some coins to the hip scarf. In real life there would be two or three rows but I wouldn't want to overload that part of the design so I experimented with a single row allong the botom:

The coins do add something to the design but they will also add to the difficulties in transfering the design on to the fabric so am stoping here and will come back to it in a couple of days to see what I think. I am happy with this as a starting point though.

Lilies

The cross stitch lilies are finished and here is a picture of them with the pansy design I had already done from the same set of patterns. I have one frame in the style I want to use for them so I will have a go at framing one to see if it works before I get a matching one for the other.

They are so colourful and the shading between colours is really well designed. Plus, at only 6 inches square they are a very manageable size. I'm glad I found the patterns.

Blue shading

Instead of going straight on to the second rainbow I got distracted, as usual, by the question of shading. Specifically, how well changing from a dark to a light colour works by comparison to changing thread thickness. To do that I found three colours that were designed to work as dark, medium and light tones of the same colour.

I started by simply shading between the different colours all at the same thickness, 1strand, which worked but lacked the dramatic impact of shading in black. When trying changing thickness I couldn't use sewing machine thread as the thinnest like I did when experimenting with black because I don't have an appropriate colour so I had to go with 1, 2 and 3 strands of embroidery silk. I  then did two tries at shading using both thickness and colour. I broke up the pattern identically for all three tries  but for the two with different thicknesses the first was simple and the second was further broken down so that some of the darker shade were reduced to thinner strands and some of the lighter shade were done thicker. To make that clearer the first picture bellow shows all the darkest 3 strand stitches and the second shows with the 2 strand stitches included.

The difference at this stage appears minimal. Even when the whole thing was completed there was not a major difference between the two tries.

The second is smoother both visually and too the touch, especially between 2 and 1 strands where the difference in thickness and colour intensity is more readily noticed by the naked eye, but the first does not stand out as noticeably bad. It is clear though that using thickness, by whichever method, is much better than simply relying on colour.

Coloured shading

I have had a go at shading a rainbow using the same colours as on the building blocks.

Unlike in the blocks, here yellow is a problem. Red/orange and green/blue/purple work fine but the transitions in and out of yellow are very clear, especially the one between it and green. I'm not sure if the problem is the move from a warm to a cold colour or if that particular shade of green is too dark. I am going to have another go using different thread colours to see how that compares.