temarimath.info

Looking for New Design Ideas

So what are you stitching?

I will be restitching this design in (hopefully) better colors and generally getting more precise with my stitch placement and execution. This is temari #080203 in my notebook. I had the luxury of sitting to stitch the redo without distractions, in particular not while multitasking with the TV or the kids doing homework. That meant I could really focus on the temari and think about it while I stitched. I kept the camera close by and took pictures as I went. Then I downloaded the pictures to a temari journal I keep and added design notes to come back to later. This is more or less an exerpt of the journal. It uses a fair bit of specific temari terminology to describe the ideas that were in my head at the time.

Step 1 - Marking the ball

It all starts here. This one will get marked with a C10 followed by the lines for 32 centers. When you are marking the ball, think about the shapes that are being formed. Sometimes you can see shapes more clearly on the ball before you have placed all of the necessary lines. While we tend to think of a C10 as being made up of pentagons and triangles there are really many more possible shapes. (That is a topic for a study all by itself.)

In this case, while I was marking I was thinking about how the marking lines would be used for this design. Does this translate to a C8? Does this translate to a multi with more centers? So far all of the stitching paths can be stitched on a regular C10 without the 32 center marking lines. Those will only be necessary for the secondary starbursts after this first layer is completely stitched. But how would the thread path work if I wanted to use more centers, like 92 or 122?

Step 2 - Stitching the first path for the design

As I finished up stitching the first path of this design I noticed a very nice star shape emerge. Here's what I thought: These stars could be done directly using kiku herringbone stitching (uwagake) and bold colors, leaving the hexagon areas open for something interesting as well. Likewise, they could be done with shitagake style (outside in) stitching. That would not open up the points as much as the uwagake (kiku herringbone) would. And I could also do braided uwagake. That has the advantage of the middle ground, gives the nice look at the intersection but does not open the legs up too much. Stripes?

Step 3 - Stitching the second path for the design

At this point I am getting a nice tri wing effect in the hexagons. I think this could be manipulated with color to give a great frame for the stars. Do stars with uwagake and the frame with shitagake. Not sure what uwagake would do on the triwing parts. They might be too spread out to make it worthwhile. But might be worth trying one to see what I get. Not sure if you would want to do layered or interwoven. THe crossovers could impact that decision.

Step 4 - Stitching the third path for the design

I see the same possibilities for the star and triwing part but with this step they are more separated. So the third step becomes a frame for both elements highlighting and separating them. I wonder what this would do on a large multi where you have far more hexagons. I am not sure the thread path translates but it could be a very cool one row design. I would need to be more careful about matching the orienation of the stitch (right over left or left over right) on any given line so that it looked uniform.

Step 5 - Stitching the fourth path for the design

I like the diamond possibilities around the hexagon center. I could exploit that shape by stitching from the outside of the diamond to the center (shitagake) with gradations of color. Leave the center star area blank and embellish as negative space or work the star in some form of uwagake as stated in previous steps. The center line of the diamonds I am looking at can be laid as a straight wrap. If I am accenting those small diamond shapes I would lay it straight across the diamond and take a back stitch around the thread bundles to secure them.

Step 6 - Stitching the fifth path for the design

This is the last part of this layer. Looking at it now the starbursts in the diamonds are much more obvious than the other shapes. A coloring idea: do the starburst with different colors, starting with one at the star intersection and working down to one at the hexagon intersection. Either use strong gradations of color or highly different colors (rainbow?). I think you could leave the design as is at that point and not do other embelishment other than possibly tying off the bundles at the center of the starbursts. That coloring might keep the emphasis on the star shape in the pentagons. The next step on this ball is to outline the diamonds with green, giving some definition to the starbursts. But, I think it might also be interesting to do it on the large triangles.

Next steps

This temari was not done at this point but the ideas were getting fewer as I continued to stitch so I put the camera away for a bit. Each time I added an element I narrowed the possibilities of what I saw. But, because I took the pictures and made notes as I went, I'll be able to come back to these ideas later and give them a try. You never know quite how something will turn out until you stitch it.

Because this investigation is about generating your own ideas from your stitching I do not have the usual list of pattern variations to attach. In this case I am not even going to show what the finished temari looked like. If I do get around to stitching some of the design ideas presented here I will link back to this page from their notebook pages so you can see where they came from.

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