As you can see, I'm hard at work on the kingfisher portion of the Chinese Flower Project, the online correspondence course I'm taking from Trish Burr. But I'm not entirely satisfied with the shading on the bird's breast. It looks a bit too "banded" to me, especially when I compare it to the photograph that was enclosed in the kit. It also seems a bit too dark, as though I made the stitching in the lower row to long, So now I'm trying to figure out what to do. I could add a few more stitches of the intermediate and light threads to increase the blending and make it a little lighter overall, but I'm not sure that will do it. Of course, I could just rip it out and start the body over. I'm reasonably happy with the portion of the body below the branch, although I think that part could use more of the lighter stitches in it, too.
Any comments, suggestions? In any event, I plan on letting it sit for a few days, not think about it, and approach it with a fresh outlook.
I would go with the three step attack.
ReplyDelete1) let it sit, then look at it again in a couple of days and see whether I like it any better.
2) if not, then intersperse some stitches to try to blend the bands in more to my liking.
3) if that's not doing it, rip rip rip. Sometimes starting over is the only way, but I usually have to see if I can fix it, first.
I think he looks quite nice as he is and suspect you can un-band him with just a few orange stitches shaded up into the yellow and down into the brown.
I'm with Kathy--I think a few darker stitches, coming through the lighter stitches, splitting WAY up in each previous stitch, will give you some more "straggling". I don't think you need to rip it out at all! The bird is looking like a real bird....
ReplyDeleteI'd leave it and add more stitches like the other girls suggested. When I did the bird from Inspirations earlier in the year I found even though I was very happy with areas I had to go back and add shading once the next area was completed. Mind you all the colours I was working with were all substitutes too which might not have helped.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments. I haven't looked at it since I wrote this post, but did send it off to Trish. She said to add some stitches to make the feathers more "feathery" so all of your advice was good. I will start up again this weekend.
ReplyDeleteThis is WAY too late...but I always remember what Kathy learnt in her RSN Crewel Course on L&S stitch.
ReplyDelete"Reach deep - deeper than you'd think".
Stumpwork and needlepainting! You are a lady after my own heart! I'm sure I used to follow you - your name is so familiar, and so is your blog's name. I must have lost it somewhere along the line.
I'm so jealous you have done Trisha's course. I'm going to do it...at some point. My favourite is the Redoute (sp) book. So lovely :-)