The Lake House: A Lesson in Practicing What I Preach

Ah, I say those words while also laughing at myself.  Here I have been researching the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and Early Modern painters' use of color in their work and I neglect to put that information into practice into my own!  It also though just proves how vitally important making and the actual act of stitching is to my research and artistic development.  You can know all the theory in the world but if you do not put it into practice of what value or credibility is it!

As you can see, I have been stitching lots of "leaves" in the form of seeding and detached chain stitches.  I began by restricting myself to 1 strand of Valdani quilting and sewing thread.  The variegation in the thread colors gave a nice and subtle effect.  Then it started to feel a bit flat to me.  So I thought I would start to add multiple strands into my needle (something I am constantly telling my students to do!) and mixing colors.  I thought I would start by mixing different variegated greens (some moving green to green and some moving green to brown or green to pinky/peach) and variegated browns and blacks.  I made the cardinal mistake of which I constantly tell my students NOT to do.  I told myself "I don't want the complement to be too strong".  Now, I always tell them to avoid starting a project with "I don't want ...." because inevitably it goes that exact direction.  Well, I proved myself right!

The triple strands did add some depth but the desaturated colors and my tentative use of complements resulted in a different flatness-- a heavy flatness.  I pinned it up and "lived with it" for a couple days and then told myself to just "get on with it" and try something.  Worst case- I get to take out stitches and let's be honest, I have loads of experience taking stitches out!  

So, I picked out some different variegated Valdani threads.  "Muddy Pots" which moves from salmon pink to kind of a dusty mauve and "Melancholic Purple" which moves from a Victorian lavender to a dusty violet.  I started mixing these with my greens and browns in the needle.  The effect was still too subtle so I tried them alone.  Still too subtle.

That is actually a salmon pink mixed in there.  It does not look salmon, does it!

So, I did what I should have done probably about a dozen colors prior.  I looked back at my research and I remembered this one color that, between us, I utterly abhor that pops up in Monet and Renoir's paintings.  It is this particular rusty, brick red that they both use in a lot of their paintings that I saw in France and I am sorry but it is kind of an ugly color.  I still want to go back to see if this was a "phase" they both went through.  Regardless, I thought, maybe I should try it.  Maybe they did not actually "like" the color either but found it useful in their compositions.  

I have to admit I got annoyed with myself so I tried a brink red.  I know this looks Jessica Rabbit lipstitck red--it is not! But it was good that I went to an extreme and then was able to pull back.

I found that if I mixed the reds and the purples in the needle that it actually gave me more of the color that I wanted instead of polka dots of red and purple. 

Because I work by myself a lot at home, I found myself in need of some opinions, so I packed up my piece and some threads and asked my colleagues Susan and Kathleen what they thought.  They agreed.  I needed to be much more aggressive in my use of complements and maybe introduce some seeding (up until this point I was only using detached chain) and the texture from not using a hoop was quite interesting.  

For the last few days, I have been working in a number of different colors and threads.  I picked out some variegated reds and more vibrant purples and have been incorporating them both alone as seeding and tiny, tiny detached chains and mixed with the greens and browns.  I was afraid that it would start to look too "fall" but I actually think it is starting to go towards a more exciting place.  I have also been incorporating detached chains using an olive green Gilt Sylke Twist which seems to bridge the greens with the reds and purples in a really interesting way due to the gold metal in it- which only heightens my hypothesis that gold could be a universal complement in compositions.  

Now, to add even more leaves!