color choices

I made several copies of the pattern and using color pencils I tried a few color choices. The first is one of my favorites, black and red. The next two versions I penciled in green for the background. I'm not sure that it comes through in the scan. It looks good in person and I have several pieces of green silk, so that looks to be my choice. I like the additional color choices of black and gold for the leaves. I don't like the way the leaves are the same top and bottom of the piece. So I adjusted the twist of the vines in the center and got alternating color patterns.

Personally, I like the way the bottom one turned out. I also spend a little time looking over various stitches and think that I'll use multiple rows of chain stitch to fill in the leaves. I'll be couching gold braid outside of the leaves and the center of the leaves. I could play with some shading in the leaves, but I want to leave the attention on the lion, so I am going to keep it simple.

I have also been practicing the bullion or coil stitch. I have scans of my efforts and I'll post those tomorrow. Now I need to go over the pattern and plan stitch direction and how I'm going to transfer the pattern to the fabric. Using the dark green silk as a ground presents two problems. One is that the fabric is very thin and putting a light color design on dark fabric is ... interesting. More on that later.

the pattern

It's taken forever, but here's the pattern finally. He's a little awkward in the face, but that's part of the original's character.




I don't have any design notes on it yet but these are my thoughts:

• For the lion proper, I expect to follow the original, with pearl direction and stitch styles. In addition, I'll couch a gold braid for the outline of the lion.

• For the back ground acanthus leaves I haven't chosen exactly how to work those yet. There will be two colors involved, whether it's black and gold, red and blue or gold and silver purl, I haven't decided. I will be picking a color for the ground tonight and hopefully have it stretched and ready for transfer tonight. Once I have that together, I'll chose the color palette for the rest.

I may be a little hindered with posting as many pictures as I'd like, since my camera is among the missing, and my daughter's camera doesn't always like to give up the pictures afterwards. I have instructions for tools, supplies and how to put the needlebook together in a brochure that i hope to also post here soon. I'm hesitating only because I want those pictures to go with it. They will be here soon, if I have to hand sketch what I need and scan those...

the Lion

This is the first image that I want to work with. I love this lion. He's from a pair of gauntlet gloves from the early part of the 17th century. I have more inspirations that I'll be posting in the next few days.