Transparency in Needlepoint – The Results

Awhile back I wrote about the problem of transparency and how that affected needlepoint. There we talked about how to recognize transparency and how to plan for it. But nothing helps as much as a picture.

Here’s the picture of the stitched rocks and you can see how I applied the principles of transparency to what I stitched.

The first step to determining transparency when stitching is to figure out which of the overlapped areas belongs to which of the other areas. I decided that all three of my transparent areas belonged to the rock below.

Let’s talk about three aspects:

Thread: Because all but the top and second from the bottom rocks are two colors, I needed to pick threads where I had two shades. That limited my choices since I work from stash. I used Gloriana’s Lorikeet for the bottom rock, Pebbly Perle for the middle rock, and Walsh silk/wool for the rock above that.

Because only the middle rock is a hard thread, it also gives the design a nice, if unintended, rhythm.

For the non-overlapping rocks, I used Gentle Arts floss and Planet Earth six-ply variegated.

Stitches: The stitches will also need to be in common for those rocks that have two colors. For all three of these rocks I picked stitches that changed direction. From bottom to top, they are: Criss-cross Hungarian, Serendipity, and Diagonal H (in Stitches vol. 3 from Ruth Schmuff). The non-overlapping rocks are in Offset Mosaic, and Jagged Edge (also in Stitches vol. 3). The difference in stitches also reinforces what areas belong together.

Color: Where two areas overlap with transparency, the resulting color is a blend of the two colors. Because some of the rocks are grey, they both darken and mute the teal, yellow-green, and blue-violet.

Using the greys as my starting point. I then looked for the other colors first for the untransparent one, then a more muted and darker one for the transparent area. By working this way I defined the end points and could look for something in between.