Daffodil Bargello

Spring is in the air and one of my readers, Anya, suggested daffodil colors as a Bargello needlepoint color scheme. Since these are one of my favorite flowers, I thought it was a great idea and started it Friday.

I decided a scheme of circles and diamonds would work best, since it would give me a chance to make something which looked like daffodils in an abstract kind of way.

That made the choice of outline color easy, a spring green, Jade in Watercolours. From an earlier project I had kept single leftover strands, so that was perfect. I matched the ending and beginning colors of my strands, called color matching, to get smooth transitions. I found the approximate center of the rectangle and put one of the single stitches over it. Then I stitched the complete outline.

To find the flower colors, I pulled out of my stash all the yellow, orange, and some white threads. I’m taking them one by one and adding them to the centers. I know I should be looking at pictures of daffodils, but I’m not, so I’m trying to remember color combinations.

The real challenge is going to be getting enough variety in color to keep it from being dull. I’m finding that with the colors similar but not that similar, texture changes tend to be masked.

So I am trying to mix it up, keeping each color (orange, bright yellow, light yellow, and white) scattered around the piece. I’m also trying to mix up two-color fills with three-color fills, and trying not to use the exact same combinations.

As I was working on this last night, I realized that this is another analogous color combination of orange, yellow, and green. That seems to be a color scheme I’m exploring an awful lot this year. Besides the heart sampler, several of you suggested other analogous schemes for Bargello, and the next sampler (premiering next week) will also be analogous. As were the Bargello accessories last week.

This is working out to be a challenging piece. It harder to get variety than I thought it would be, I love the color combination, and the inspiration flower gives me lots of room for ideas.

So here’s something for you to try. Take a type of flower you love, but can’t grow (I think I’ll try peonies next) and use it to make a Bargello based on it.