Once again this week I came to the conclusion that part of making design decisions is taking out colors that don't work. The color combination I had originally chosen with the Ruby Watercolours included both burgundy pearl cotton and burgundy metallic. On the blue canvas, with silver highlights and pale lavender Impressions, it came across as red, white, and blue. While I consider myself fairly patriotic, this was not the effect I was going for! I had hoped that the lavender would pull more of the purple out of the Watercolours, but it didn't work.
So Kathryn, you were right. In the photographs on the last post, the right side design looked better, but that, unfortunately was a combination of poor color choices and poor photography! The camera flash made the pale lavender center and rays out to the corners look like silver. Jane is right too, and that's not what it actually looked like to me. However, several people mentioned that their first impression was of red, white, and blue when they saw it in person.
I realized that I needed to dump one of the two burgundies. I had already tried to find a good shade of purple pearl cotton, and I definitely needed more pizazz in the piece. I decided to try a bright purple metallic to replace the red. Here's how that experiment turned out (with the flash off this time so you can see the Impressions):
Now, I like the lower version with the purple right around the lavender center. I think it's largely because the purple metallic is so much brighter than the burgundy. I chose the left side photo before because I was trying to use the wider, longer silver bands to brighten up the center. Also, the purple around the center makes the lavender look like lavender!
Hooray! I've finally found my colors! Now to restitch the opposite half so I have something to show the ANG folks on Wednesday.
Thank you all for the great comments on the last post. It's great to get feedback from fellow stitchers! Cyn and Chris, I'm glad you've found my blog - and Chris, I'm sorry to say I don't know of other bloggers working this piece yet. The only other place I know to see pictures of this piece is in Gay Ann's Shining Needle Society classroom, on the group website.
Here's where mine stands. I do want to finish Part I before the next meeting so we can talk about the next stitches. We should be receiving Part II sometime in June, but we won't be stitching it as a group until the July or August meeting, I would guess.
