Choosing your own floss colors for cross stitching is more fun than always using the called for colors. Sometimes, the called for colors are so perfect, I have no desire to change them but I love playing with color and in a piece like the one I’m currently working on, part of the fun is choosing my own colors. I’m still working on A House Is . . by Stitches Through The Years.
I’ve been going back and forth with floss to use for some of the flowers on my current project. I wanted a peach colored flower but nothing I had that was peach looked good with the golden stem. I didn’t want to go with a coral so I went back to a pink. I tried a pink I thought was dark enough and it didn’t show up. Ripped that out. I tried a darker pink and felt like it was too dark. I decided to use the same pink I’m using in the red flowers. That pink shows up ok with the red but not at all with the gold.
You really can barely see the pink with the gold. Ripped that out.
What I really wanted was a mauve/grayish pink. I went through all my DMC boxes and nothing was close. I need to buy lavender/purple/mauve floss for sure. I thought maybe a blue would work. I found a nice sky blue in the DMC collection, stitched one flower . . no, that’s just not what I wanted. Having recently organized the DMC floss was very nice. It was all in one place, all on bobbins and easy to see.
The blue flower was the fifth flower I had ripped out. I was about to wear out my linen. I didn’t remember having any mauve/lavender in my overdye collection but, in an effort to choose the perfect color of floss, I went to my overdyes and searched just to see what I could find.
I found the perfect color – just what I was wanting. Can you read the name? Root Beer Float! You have to admit that is so weird but it’s just the color I was wanting.
After making two lavender flowers, I’m leaning towards using three or four colors for those flowers. They’re a bit bigger and I think having them all the same color might be boring. For now, I’m going to go back and work inside the borders. There’s also a tree growing out of the urn. Both trees have blossoms so I’m going to try putting different colored flowers in the trees and if I like that, I’ll use those same colors in the border flowers.
Today I will finish the flowers in the grass. Then I’ll work on the two trees and their blossoms. I’m thinking maybe an aqua and maybe I will make a coral, but a light coral flower. We’ll see what I come up with and hopefully there will be some good progress today. I don’t have to go anywhere. Should get lots of stitching time.
Dottie Newkirk says
That lavender is lovely. I really like the “depth/dimension” it gives to the flower just like in nature.
Ruth says
What a seeker-after-perfection you are! The lavender is just right! fyi: a bush or tree usually has blossoms all the same color, or shades of the same color. But of course this is fabric and you can do whatever you want.
Judy Laquidara says
Yes, but in my world, all flowers should be different colors! 🙂
cindy says
i think if there was some sort of pattern to the flowers, that different colors might work very well. The link above goes to a different pattern and i had to search for the right one. the one i found has a white house. i don’t remember what color the flowers are though.
Wendy Buchanan says
Lavender Flower reminds me of Scottish thistle! Very pretty