A Heart full of colour

How to place colors

Here’s how I chose to use the colors for this work

The stems and large leaves are all embroidered with Stef Francis variegated thread. As far as possible, when a leaf is directly in line with a stem, I’ve tried to follow the continuity of the thread colors in the sequence of motifs.

The large flowers are created in shades of orange, with the color scheme of each flower varying to give the impression of great variety in the design.

The small leaves are embroidered using the 3 plain shades of green in Soie d’Alger, but a leaf is added from time to time with the variegated thread to break up the monotony of the work.

The small flowers dotted around the design are all created using the 2 shades of red chosen, helping to give this heart a dynamic, cheerful feel.

The stars are embroidered with the only thread whose color, blue, breaks with the continuity of the warm tones to bring the unexpected touch needed for the originality of this project.

Despite the limited number of colors, a well-thought-out distribution of colors helps to give this work great density and richness.

As far as the embroidery is concerned, I’ve kept it simple and used mainly 1 thread. The stems are embroidered in stem stitch and the leaves in fishbone stitch or flat satin stitch. The smallest flowers are also worked in satin stitch. The petals of the larger flowers are done in long and short stitch, but I had fun embroidering different hearts for each one. To do this, I used French knots, straight stitch, lazy daisy stitch, overlock chain stitch, and spider web stitch.

Next week we’ll look at how to make the sides of this embroidery.

This will complete a project designed specifically to present a simple method of helping people to use colors.