Right. Well it has been a while. I moved on to the next leaf and it didn't go so well:

It looks a bit like a mouldy banana. The shading between the colours is fine but the colours themselves look awful. The light patches in particular are far too white. That will teach me not to pick my threads out when the light is bad - orange light made the white look much more yellow than it really is. So I did a bit of unpicking and tried again:

The pale section is at least broken up a bit but the mouldy banana problem remains. This is definitely not my finest hour!

No unpicking required

Finally I have managed to sew a leaf for the Autumn panel that did not require any of the stitches to be unpicked:

I suspect what helped is that although there are a variety of colours they are all roughly the same shade so there were fewer awkward transitions. Again there are seven colours of thread included in this motif, not including the black outline. The three leaves together look quite good:

There is a nice contrast in shape and colour that works well. The plan has always been to do five coloured leaves in total and gold ones in the background. However, when I started thinking about where the gold leaves should fit I started wondering. I tried making some outlines:

I am not really convinced. So I am carrying on with the next coloured leaf and thinking about the gold ones in the background. The may need to be much smaller than I had thought.

A lesson in chosing stitch patterns

Well after a bit of uncertainty about what extra colour I should use I have finished the second leaf on the Autumn panel:

I chose a slightly purple toned red rather than a bright colour because although it was counter intuitive to pick something that on its own looked unnatural the combination actually looked more natural that way. I really need to develop my understanding of colour! Anyway, I don't think the final result required any more unpicking after the last picture I put up, but overall this one was difficult. I think the problem lay in the stitch pattern I was using. As you can see it is a very heavy pattern with stitches going in a lot of directions. On the one hand multiple directions is good for shading as the complexity helps prevent the kind of stripes that appear when simple patterns are broken up regularly. On the other hand, the complexity and density means that there has to be a lot of overlap between colours to create gradual shading or the colours are too dense (in the areas of transition each repetition of the pattern had to contain at least three different colours of thread). This makes it very difficult to judge how the shading will work out as you go along. Which in turn leads to a lot of unpicking. So the lesson learnt is that this stitch pattern is not good for shading - but it has forced me to practise my stitch counting in broken patterns which is probably good for me.

Colour Shading Again

I have managed to get myself to the part of the country that has the rest of my embroidery silks in it and have been carrying on with the autumn leaves panel. This has involved some unpicking since I decided that I wanted to original leaf I started with to be predominantly yellow and far more gradually shaded than my initial attempts had been. I have therefore been using multiple needles with different coloured threads to help avoid mistakes when I am shading between colours:

Actually, I appear to be getting better at counting on evenweave fabric and while using blackwork stitch patters as I am making far fewer mistakes of that type. Which is a very good thing as I have found that the best way to create the kind of gradual shift in colour I want is to have continual shading with no sections that are completely one colour. The picture bellow shows the completed leaf in better light:

Although there is a general trend towards yellow, some parts shade into green and some are orange. But rather than differentiating between the areas I wanted to be different colours when I was sewing I took a very fluid approach. That explanation wasn't very clear so maybe a close up will help:

There are seven different coloured threads in the above image, not including the black outline, but they all overlap so much that you have to concentrate hard to see where one starts and the next begins. This allows for very quick but smooth graduations in colour. The trick seems to be to not have even a single repetition of the pattern in a single colour. Where there are no sections that are identifiably one colour it becomes easier for the eye to accept the transition to the next one as there is simply no dividing line, however blurred.

As you can see in the first picture above, I started on a second leaf while I had the limited selection of threads that is going to be much darker than the first. However, the problem I had with the colour on that was the opposite one to with the first. The red/orange patch that has been sewn above contained three different coloured threads but unless you look closely it is virtually impossible to tell them apart. In the image bellow I have done some unpicking and introduced some lighter colours to help:

This is better but the use of only five colours of thread still seems quite limited. I think I will need to add something even darker to give this one the variation in colour it needs. The main thing I have learnt from this exercise so far is that colour is really very complicated!

Autumn Panel

Firstly, here is the sampler I made for my mum with its backing done so it is ready to be displayed:

Now on to the next project. I bought a few pots of fabric paint (brown, gold and bronze) and attacked a piece of evenweave fabric so it is an uneven colour. I started by soaking the fabric in diluted brown paint so that there would be no completely white sections left then used the brown paint to darken some areas. Finally I added the gold and bronze for texture and sparkle. Since the design plan is to go back to the autumn leaf I did on my previous set of colour experiments, the background is supposed to be vaguely treelike in its shape. I will do five different shaped leaves using coloured shading with a few gold and bronze ones using very thin sparkly thread in the background. It will be a bit abstract and muted. Here are the materials:

I am at the opposite end of the country from my collection of embroidery silks at present to I just chose a few colours that seemed to work well together. However I quickly hit on a snag:

The yellow thread I selected in the shop turned out to look pale brown when used against a brown fabric rather than a white one. It also blends in with the background so that it is virtually invisible. The similarity in colour between the 'yello' thread and the background also means that the orange stands out hugely and doesn't blend together as well as it looked like it would. From a distance the situation is even more obvious:

Only the orange shows up at all. I need to re-think this. I really like working on a coloured background but in future I need to have it with me when I select the colours I will use since it has a knock on effect on all the rest of the colours used. I have found an interesting looking book on using colour in embroidery which I hope to get for my birthday so I plan to work on thus more in the future. In the mean time I need to rethink my colour choices on this piece.

Combination shading

At the end of my last post I questioned whether I could combine the two different types of colour shading techniques (breaking up the stitch and two colours in the needle) with shading by thickness. To test it I sewed two random lines of running stitch in different colours; the red line to indicate where there should be a transition from dark to light and the black line dividing green from blue.

Unfortunately because I didn't have much space left on my bit of experiment fabric by this point it had to be a bit cramped so the actual shading, which was the point of the whole exercise, had to be done very quickly. It looks more like blurring than real shading, the edges between colours and shades are simply prevented from being harsh lines rather than being gradual transitions. The over all effect is interesting though.

I'm not sure what I could use it for but I think I will find a purpose somehow. From a distance the impact is stronger than it appears here and is very striking. The only difficulty that emerged in terms of the combination of two techniques was where the red and black lines crossed over, shading between two types of shading method was tricky but I think it can be done. Whether it would be as easy with two colours that do not compliment each other as well as these two do is another matter though.

This completes the current set of colour experiments as I have run out of space, here is the full set:

I will now be moving on to my first proper design, the blackwork bellydancer I showed preliminary ideas for a couple of weeks ago.

Different technique

It occurs to me that I have been treating shading between colours as if it was shading between thicknesses, i.e. breaking up the pattern of one colour and filling in the gaps with then next, but colour operates in a different way. In silk shading transitions can be made by mixing colours in the needle, instead of having two strands of a single colour you have one of each. To try it I did a simple series of blocks next to each other.

This works extremely well even changing between colours and it is much smoother than the other technique. To test it further I did one of the shading outwards squares that I tried with black shading as it is slightly more complicated.

Even slightly more complicated shapes work with this kind of shading. However, it does limit you to two strands and doesn't allow for the change in thickness as well as colour which, we have already seen, gives a more dramatic look. I wonder if it would look ok to combine the two techniques with in needle shading used for thicker, darker shades and breaking up the pattern used for thin, light ones?

Autumn leaf

To explore the red/orange/yellow/green combination which has been causing trouble I decided to ignore blue and purple which are straight forward and have another go focusing on just those four. Given my musing at the end of yesterday's post I also wanted to move away from the rectangular shading experiments into something more fluid that would better reflect how I might want to ultimately use the colors and, since the colours are all vaguely autumnal, decided a stylised autumn leaf would be good. The idea is not to provide a realistic image but to shade the colours randomly within the prescribed outline. All the leafs I have done so far were basically the same shape so this one is different:

It also had the added benefit of forcing me to practice sewing gradual curves which I am still not all that good at. I chose the large 'lace' stitch pattern to keep it very stylised and used 5 thread colours (red, dark orange, light orange, yellow, and green) all with a single strand. Here is the result:

The difference between the light and dark orange doesn't really show up, I should have used a darker shade of green and the bottom left section is too light by comparison with the others but I still really like it. The lack of smooth transitions isn't a problem because the changes in colour are so quick that it isn't necessary and I love how bold and colourful it looks. I think I will come back to this when I design my first coloured blackwork piece.

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.

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.

Building Blocks 3 - finished

Here are the filled in blocks. I decided to switch the positions of the orange and purple ones from the mock-up which I think looks better and am rather pleased with it. The shading works reasonable well, especially from a distance:

Yellow wasn't too bad in the end though it is still noticeably lighter than the others. I tried to get around the difficulty by using slightly heavier patterns in that block than the others. On the close up bellow you can see that the darkest area is a tapestry stitch to get nearly complete coverage and the other two are ones I used in a previous experiment, from the post titled 'Experiment 2, which came out at the darker end of their respective levels.

The other two blocks that were particularly interesting were purple and orange:

The lightest area of orange shows the importance of direction. The pattern I was copying from had the waves positioned vertically, and initially I did the same but it it looked ridiculous so I tried horizontal and it is now one of my favourite light patterns. I should have taken a picture of the bad version but I had unpicked it before the thought occurred to me.

The dark purple section shows that too complex and small a pattern doesn't read properly. The dark orange shading above is very fiddly but it works because there is enough variation that you can immediately see how the pattern repeats. The purple one looks like a knit or darn, the pattern is virtually impossible to see. I suppose it might be useful at some point if I want to sew a figure waring a jumper but otherwise I think I'll chalk it up to the learning curve and forget about it.

Building Blocks 2 - outline

I decided to have black outlines to all of the blocks in order to help distinguish the different areas and used the recommended technique for transferring patterns from a page to fabric - sewing running stitch through both paper and fabric then tearing the paper away. However, there was a problem. Although I thought I had lined up the vertical lines on the paper pattern with the grain of the fabric I apparently wasn't accurate enough.

You can see how the verticals indicated by the tacking are very slightly diagonal and the boxes ended up rather uneven.

Eventually I just used the tacking as a vague guideline for the height and width of the blocks but worked with the grain of the fabric for verticals. This is what I ended up with:

 Since this is just an exercise it is bearable and I won't start again but it is definitely irregular so I need to find a more accurate way to transfer designs to fabric. I had hoped that by drawing the design as a geometric grid on paper first I would be able to make it uniform but I think for future reference it would be better to work out the angles and sew regular straight line shapes onto the fabric direct. I'll have another go at the tacking technique some time I'm using a more irregular or curved shape as it may just be that I need more practice..

Building Blocks 1

In order to have a go at coloured blackwork I am starting simple by using single threads to create flat blocks of different patterns. This seemed like a good time to try to expand my vocabulary of stitch patterns again and experiment with shading using different patterns. Therefore, I will be sewing a regular pile of coloured cubes, like children's building bocks. This is a simple mock-up of what I am aiming for:

Each cube will be in a single colour and will be shaded entirely by using different patterns. The rules are that I am not allowed to use the same pattern twice or simply add or remove a few stitches from a base pattern  to make it different and I can't cheat by changing thread thickness. This should be interesting, I am slightly worried about the yellow block in case it doesn't show up enough. I looked through my thread collection and these are the colours I have chosen:

The yellow is the darkest one I have and the others are chosen because they are all in the same shade range. I think they make a nice combination.