Monday, November 13, 2006

Current WIP


I am currently working on Brightneedle's Lady's Collection, which I got through Elegant Stitch earlier this year. I didn't make even one stitch in it before or during class, but I loved the design so knew I'd get to it.

Now that I've finished stitching two of the pieces, I'm sadly not quite as taken with it. I still love the design, but I'm not really enthused with the color choices and especially with the way Brightneedle chose to mix some of the colors together in the design. Makes me wish I'd gotten the chart second-hand and kitted it myself, though I suspect I would have kitted it as called for in the chart and then figured out I didn't like the colors the same way I have now.

In any case, here's the first part. I really don't like the mix of two different greens in the little girls dress -- and they're similar enough to each other that rather than seeing little dots of a different green within the other, it looks like her dress is stained. There is a lot more pink in this design than I had realized, too, and I'm not normally a huge fan of pink. I actually do like these pink shades, but definitely NOT with the lighter green shades in the design. As a teenager in the preppy eighties, I got tired of pink and green together a long time ago. But the main thing I dislike about the lighter shades of green in this design is that they look like ... flourescent snot. Perhaps, since I list green as one of my favorite colors, I'm just too picky.



I'm also finding I'm not thrilled with NPI threads either. This is the first time I've stitched an entire project with them, and I'm not liking the way they lay on the fabric. Sometimes, the stitches look bunched together, and other times they lay neater. The color doesn't seem to make a difference, as sometimes the color lays nicely in one area but not in another. I figured it must be something I was doing, but even when I'm very careful to let my needle dangle and unwind every few stitches, it's not preventing the bunching -- and when I don't pay as much attention, the threads might lay just the way I want. Maybe it's the fact that this project is all over one, but I haven't had the same problem with silks of other brands even when I'm stitching over one. Hmmm.

Here is the second part. There are numerous errors in this one, but I decided not to frog and restitch. That's partly because frogging over one stitching is such a pain, partly because this project was kitted with a minimum of floss to begin with, and partly because I'm no longer as happy with the project as a whole. Plus, I resort to my usual excuse that any mistakes make the work mine. I frequently try to make a mistake work in a design instead of ripping it out; this design is no exception to that rule of mine, LOL.



This project is stitching up much more quickly than I thought it would, though. The above two parts are the most stitching-intensive. The rest of the parts may start to bore me, as they are rather repetitive. Hopefully, the fact that there isn't much stitching on each one will help me get this done quicker, as I'm already eagerly looking forward to stitching something else, LOL.

1 comment:

lena-lou said...

I read with interest you post about this design, it was one that I have liked but it is interesting to hear your views on the colours and silks. I think it looks very 'spring' like with the colours used and it looks nice and neatly stitched on your blog and unless I studied it I can't see the mistakes so they must be small ones!! Do keep going with it as I bet it will be a beautiful set when it is all finished and I haven't seen anybody finish it yet :-)