From the Draft to the Pattern
- Polina Gorokhova
- Jul 21, 2021
- 2 min read
Do you still believe once the designer has started the new cross stitch pattern he/she works from one piece of the future design to another with no looking back, retouching and changing colours?
The truth is, we change a lot during our work. Not always, but frequently. And the designing is a step-by-step way from the draft to the pattern. I will show a progress on one of my patterns and tell you how I came from a childish design to a wonderful flower on the pattern.
You can see the very first version of the rose on my 'Flowers Are Better Than Bullets' cross stitch pattern. I just picked up some shades of pink. Than I selected the mid-colour, the basic one. And I was drawing petal by petal, separately, firstly just colouring them with the basic colour and than adding shadows and highlights. The difference between shades and highlights is not truly much visible here, and the rose looks flat. A beginner might have leave it as it was... But I always take a fresh look at what I have done as a draft. And as I wasn't satisfied with my first result, I decided to do 2 things:
1) deepen shadows, light the highlights more;
2) add some more shades to make the flower more eye-catching.
Do you see the evident difference between the two pictures? Now the pattern already has space, volume. You can feel some air in it, the petals are more real-looking. I took white 3865 DMC colour for the highlights and moved as far as 3832 DMC. There is a great dynamic range between the colours, which is good when you try to give your pattern some dimension. But that was not enough for me.
To make the stitching far more interesting process and grant my stitchers the joy of a brilliant work and a great result, I took different pink shades and added the backstitch with 2 strands. This effective trick is easy and helps deepen the shadows more. What is also important, the backstitch line looks more artistically, like the line on the illustration left by liner or brush. But wait a minute... The rose is so gentle, why use black colour for backstitching? Let's take a bit more pale shade! I chose the grey one and you can see the result below.
...and even that wasn't the final result) Though the progress was apparent. So, that was the long way my rose made from that pale-looking flat draft from the first pic to the splendid flower you can see on the final pattern! I have added the preview of the design below. You can click the picture to visit my shop and see the pattern there.
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