Monday, May 18, 2009

New project: Siamese Twins


And here's my next project. The Badbird patterns have seriously restored my crafting mojo - the second I finished embroidering Lottie I printed out and started on the Siamese twins, Rose and Daisy. Again, I enlarged the image 170% on the copier and taped 4 printouts together to trace the final image.


First, I started with a red transfer pencil, just like last time:


tracing my new project

But, lo and behold, when I flipped the tracing paper over to transfer, I didn't like the flipped version - the proportions and balance looked off. Drat! The idea of tracing all over again, and fussing with my iron was not appealing. So, I tried a shortcut. I pulled out some carbon paper (Sublime Stitching):


Switching to carbon paper (SS transfer paper)

It was easy to use, not messy at all, and saved me the extra hassle of ironing on. The lines are crisp, sharp, and dark:


finished tracing with carbon paper

If you look closely you'll notice I made some changes - Andrea Zuill's design has lots of beautiful details that I left out from pure laziness. I wanted to finish quickly, so I stuck with the simpler elements like the hearts and dotted border. I also added one of Andrea's hearts under the girls' hands and added their initials:


little added detail

I started stitching right away - here they are after 2 hours:


so far

I was admittedly distracted by The Painted Veil (most notably, Ed Norton) and slightly less so by Max Payne (cool effects, but overall it was a drawn out stinker).


colors used so far

These are the only colors I've used so far - two different shades of brown for the girls' hair (for a tiny bit of contrast) and a peachy pink shade for their skin (that's Presencia floss at the top, if you're curious). I still need to pick out the rest of the colors for the girls... I'm thinking, oddly (because I usually hate them) purples... or some deep wines and magentas...


purples?
wines, burgundies and magentas?

Yay! I'm so excited!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's so cool! I love it, and feel all inspired to get stitching :)

Anonymous said...

Carbon paper! I always forget about using that for patterns. I have a huge Charley Harper picture I'd like to finish, but I'm daunted about using the transfer paper and have it not show through. Thanks for the reminder, and I love Lottie@

Vanessa said...

Love the bags of color especially the second set! Cannot wait to see more