In the loop with Lizzy

Lizzy Dabczynski–Bean explains how clever colouring techniques can create delicate effects

Hello, my Cross Stitch er friends! This month, my pen ultimate mandala-inspired design is inspired bys pr in g’ s beautiful bulb flowers, specifically the ‘Clairette’ iris. I especially admire this iris because of the way the colours fade together. The centres of these flowers tend to be a lighter, corn flower blue. Then the petals graduate out ward into a dark, rich blue. What’ s interesting about the dark petals is they start off as acre amy white toward the flower and the deep blued rips into the cream colour until it overtakes the out ward edge of the petal.

The way this flower grow sin nature illustrates one of my favourite methods of cross stitching that I recommend using in Stitch People portraits–mixing floss colours, or stitching colour-on-colour. These methods create gradient, ombre and/ or graduated colour effects. There are dozens of instances where you’ d want to use an effect like this to port ray a character. A trend in hair styling is to dye the hair from light to dark. Pets often have fur that changes colours all around the legs, torso, neckand chest. Some of our favourite items of clothes are different colours, or have patterns on them. For these instances, I find the solution is to mix colours or do a colour-on-colour effect.

Mixing Colours: This is often best for a subtle effect, and is often best achieved when the colours that are mixed together aren’ t too vastly different from each other. For example, if a brunette woman appears to have highlighted hair, it’s likely her hair has a mixture of light, medium and dark brown hues. To stitch her hair, I’ d use one floss of a medium-lightbrown, one of a rich, medium brown and one of a medium-dark brown. I would not choose one strand of a blonde-ish colour, oneof medium brown and one of very dark brown. This contrast might look silly. But the subtle contrast, on the tiny scale of a Stitch People portrait, is just right.

Colour-on-Colour: Aneffective method to create effects is to complete a cross stitch using three strands off loss in the same colour, then create across stitch in the same square using one strand off loss of a different colour. This works well when colour gradients area bit more obvious, and it also works well for sheer and lace effects! I’ve worked this effect into this month’ s pattern! Over top the three-threaded cream stitch es around the border, I’ve got blue half stitch es over them. I’ d recommend completing these blue half stitch es using one or two strands off loss. You could even complete full cross stitch es if you’d like! And hopefully you’ ll see just how lovely this change-making effect canbe.

Lizzy