Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Mystery in a Corner: A Gay Ann Rogers' design


Happy dance as I have just finished Mystery in a Corner.
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This is a project that Gay Ann Rogers created to help us learn more about colors as I have explained in my 3 previous posts. I have found this project challenging, but not overwhelming. Actually, I was surprised to see that it was much easier than anticipated. Funny, how we fear the unknown at times. There were lots of little decisions to make along the way and I must say that I am rather happy with the results.
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I was trying to achieve a few goals while stiching this project. There was an awful amount of green, which I love, but I wanted to make blue the focus of the piece. Looking at the finished project right now, it seems that the blue stands out a little more, but my eyes are also drawn to the yellow-orange colors and then the green-topaz. I also wanted to emphasize certain sections of the design and make other sections not as dominant, as I wanted some resting place for the eyes.
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At first, I was a bit surprised to see that the design had no outside borders around it and was not sure if I liked it or not, but after the initial surprise, I started liking the idea and decided to leave the design as is. Some stitchers have decided to create some borders around, but I preferred to go with the "unusual" instead and I am glad I did.
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As I have done in my previous posts, I have taken photos along the way. This time around I did not follow exactly the order of stitching as I wanted to control better certain sections of the design. In this photo below we see the first two metallic threads in the middle sections.


In this second photo, I have stitched the half eyelet blue because I wanted it not to be a distraction to that section of the design, to make it disappear in a sense.

In this third photo, added some diagonal stitches in green.



In this photo, I have just added some blue and then topaz metallic threads under the green diagonal stitches.




Here, I have decided to use green or topaz for all those extra line of stitches, but have stitched the cross stitch variation in blue metallic.


At this point here, it was time to add the watercolor thread by selecting the colors I like the best in it and also making sure I had a repeat more or less accurate of what I had already done in the other sections.



I have added the last photo at the beginning of my blog entry and it consisted of the overstitching done in Impressions (blue).
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It will now be time to bring it to my framer and let her do her magic :-)
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Pierrette =^..^=