My efforts to dye my embroidery floss looked great at first, and even now, out in the sunlight they look good, but held up to the Lisa's autumn runner they look wrong...steely blue instead of grayish grape. I have put them back into mordant and plan to add a tiny bit of cochineal to the skeins to see if I can get closer to the color I want. If I don't, I'll just go with what I have, but I feel a little stubborn about trying for the color I imagine. We'll see. My stubbornness will evaporate if it gets too hard.
While I stitch away on Lisa's Autumn, I am also trying to figure out what to do with Summer. I'm not sure how to translate my giant photos of foxglove and dragonflies into patterns on cloth (paint, wax, silk screen?). I need to get some gray into the design because of the color of the dishes, but I don't want too much because gray doesn't seem summery. After checking in with Grace's blog (windthread.typepad.com) it occurred to me that I could just draw the pattern on with permanent marker in the color I want, like Grace draws in what she wants on her cloth. Unfortunately I'm daunted by the effort to draw on the size of cloth I am contemplating. There are too many things I don't know about how it will work. I need to do some tests, but testing for me has always been frustrating. I have spent many hours in the past testing for color or pattern, and then when I go to the full cloth, it looks entirely different. I might as well have not bothered to test at all. Also, I have trouble taking tests seriously. Still, there is too much unknown here to just leap onto my large white linen square. I fuss and fiddle, and then remember the Pillow Project. You recall the Pillow Project, right? .....my idea to use tests to produce some replacements for my tatty couch pillows? Yeah, me neither, until just now. By making something with a purpose I can short-circuit my tendency to half-ass my tests and work through whatever problems present themselves, as each pillow will be a mini-project unto itself. I may find that my ideas will work, or maybe come up with a new possibility, and if I fail completely I at least won't have wasted too much time or fabric.
Anyway, I have made three linen blanks a little bigger than 18 inches square and today drew a fragment of my pattern onto one, using a Faber-Castell Pitt pen in Warm Gray III. (I wanted to stay with the full-sized pattern, not shrinking it down because I am using a smaller cloth.) It was hard. The linen is absorbent and the pen bled more than I thought it would. I was hoping I could get a calligraphic feel to my strokes, but I'm not sure I succeeded with that. Still, the pattern is coherent, so I will go on. I plan to make another one by drawing and then try one using wax, my usual method.