Heart Update – The Morning Fog

I wanted to take a minute to bring you up to date on the progress of the SF heart. I’ve completed the bridge in the fog and started on the street for the cable car.

The bridge is stitched in Crescent Color’s pearl cotton in a color called Chili Pepper. My DH, a San Franciscan native, declared it to be perfect. The accent on it is orange Mandarin Floss.

But I am most proud of the fog. I used Lorikeet from Glorianea Threads in a Silver Fox Light. I deliberately picked out the strands with the most color variation. Even so the change is very subtle.

I didn’t want it to look uniform, but to have swirls and tendrils in it, so I used a technique I call clumping. For this, you use a multi-colored thread and stitch in Continental. Make irregular clumps of stitches until the color changes. Then move a few threads over and repeat the process.

Continue making clumps until you’ve filled about half the area. Then go back and stitch the rest in Continental. The color changes will react unpredictably making some clumps larger and accenting others.

It’s a fantastic way to use hand-dyed and overdyed threads. I think it looks just perfect here.

One final note about the street. The lines on the street are for the cable car. The two outside lines are the tracks for the wheels and the wider area in the middle is for the cable. The center line is a slot. Cable cars move because a grip clamps down through the slot and holds onto the cable which is what moves under the street. It’s protected by metal on each side. I’m stitching the slot first using Pebbly Perle.

I’ll post next when the street is done.