Saturday, April 25, 2020

Needlework WiP: "VS 4 Elements: Air" Band 18

The last band!  Like the other samplers in this series, the bottom band is bargello.  The designer's brother is a weatherman and per the note in the pattern, he often describes "Rivers of Air heated by the sun", so she calls this band 'rivers of air' and fits so well. 

There are six layers of stitches and it's a nice relaxing band since all the layers are the same height - four stitches.  

Because of the color conversion, I puzzled a bit over how to approach this.  The original version used white, the pink/white/baby blue overdye silk, two #4 braids in pink and pale blue, pale pink silk and pale blue DMC.    The white and overdye were easy, as were the pale silk and the dark silk (in place of the DMC), but what to do about the Kreinik braid?   Well, one was fairly easy - a braid to match the heavy cording used in the couching and the 'birds in flight' band.  Kreinik makes several shade of gold #4 braid.  I first tried the "Vatican Gold", but it was just a bit too dark and intense, as was the "Old Gold".  The 002 "Gold" is the best match to the gold used in the other bands.  

That left just one other color to choose.  I really lucked out that I had a lemon yellow (091) #4 braid in the stash.   The base color is a very close match to both the lemon beads and also to the lighter silk.  What's fun about this one is that it has a holographic fiber element in it, so there are hints of rust and green in the sparkle.  Impossible to photograph, but very pretty in person. 

I put the overdyed silk between the two semi-solid silks in order to highlight the color transition between the two shades, and put the gold metallic to anchor the bottom of the piece.   I think it turned out well.

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