Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Failed experiment

I've been stitching tea towels as my "carry along project. When I saw the blue transfer on this blue-striped towel, I liked the way the image only showed up in the white stripes. So, I thought, what if I stitch just the white parts, like you're viewing the cup through a screen.

I still like the concept but it wasn't working at all. I think for it to work properly, I'd need to think of this in advance and carefully place the design on the fabric so important pieces would appear and the design would retain it's integrity.

Plus, the embroidery I was doing was too thick to recede behind the stripe. Plain running stitch, my first, undocumented, experiment, didn't work either. So I ripped the above out and began stitching the design in a more conventional fashion. I'm pleased with it now.

2 comments:

Jenny WOolf said...

I agree the second version works better. I wonder if it is something to do with the tonal values of the "failed" version. The stripes are pale and one would normally expect a screen in front of an item to be darker relative to what is behind it.

WendyBee said...

I love the tea towel, so pretty. This is my first visit to your site, and I also love the Hardanger runner in the above post.
Great work!
WendyBee