Tien Chiu

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February 4, 2012 by Tien Chiu

Unsightly veins

Here is the first round of testing on the leaves, using chiffon over peau de soie and chiffon over china silk, with hand-painted veins on the leaves:

two leaves with painted veins
two leaves with painted veins

I don’t like the veins.  They are painted in gold on purple and gold on dark red; the rightmost leaf is also outlined in gold.  (Click to see the larger version.)  The high contrast between gold and purple/red breaks up the color and is visually distracting – it’s hard to see it’s a leaf!  The lower leaves, which have much lower contrast, are visually interesting but not overwhelmingly so.

This suggests to me that I do not want a strong pattern or value contrast in the leaves, which narrows the options considerably.  I think I will wind up using chiffon over a patterned background; the chiffon will tone down the pattern, making it subtle, but hopefully still visible.  (I like to reward the close-up viewer as well as the one who sees it from 30 feet away.)  I will use embroidery in a closely related color for the veins.

Since I am not going to my guild meeting after all (was out way too late at a party last night and am too tired this morning to drive 40 miles to San Francisco), I expect to do a lot of dyeing, construction, and surface design experiments today.

Stay tuned for further developments!

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Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, sewing Tagged With: autumn splendor

Previous post: Looking at leaves
Next post: Leaf colors and fabrics

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