One question I am often asked is, ‘how long would it take for me to stitch this?’
Surprisingly my answer is often very vague as generally the sewing is the trickiest part of the design process and involves a lot of stitching, unpicking, trying another colour, trying another bead……So it can take me a long time even if the final design is quite simple and may be stitched in a couple of hours.
This week I have been wrestling with a good choice of background colour for my little garden birds. Often the best solution is to choose a contrasting colour for the thread. Unfortunately, the beads used to make these birds cover the entire rainbow so there isn’t an obvious background colour that works with all of them. There are added complications. The background has to be dark enough for the whites to shine but sufficiently pale not to dominate. Then there is the problem that glass beads reflect light so will change colour depending on the thread they are sitting next to.
I had avoided trying one of my favourite, fail safe colours, ‘chicken blue’ until this morning because I was sure the blue tit would simply disappear but I think it might work…..Love to know your thoughts. In the meantime I had better start stitching the other three birds again!
Ann's Orchard 