Autumn Runner: Colors & Stitches & Thinking

I’m still working on this hand embroidered linen table runner, with an autumn theme.

I don’t really have any dedicated, absolute, structured plan for the thing, aside from embroidering a decorative runner for my table, to use during autumn. That’s a good enough plan, isn’t it?

Sometimes, that’s all a plan needs to be.

But since I’m not going at this with a dedicated, absolute, structured plan, I find myself not thinking about normally important things like colors and stitches (though admittedly, I’m not going all-out berserk on stitch variety on this piece), and instead just doing whatever occurs to me as it occurs to me.

Is this a good thing? Or a bad thing? I don’t know. I’ll make that judgement a bit later – probably when it’s too late for the Lazy Mary to want to do anything about it.

At this point, the piece is not ironed, so don’t expect beautiful, pristine pictures of fastidiously prepared linen here. (Excuses, heh heh.) I just smoothed it out with my hands before I took pictures.

I started the embroidery on the ends of the design, working the smaller outside leaves on the design first, and then the center leaf was stitched last.

Because design-wise, the leaf line is balanced, I kept the colors more or less balanced. I wouldn’t want the leaf line to fade from dark to light from left to right, for example, because I don’t think that would make sense to the eye.

In that sense, I suppose there was some planning, but I can’t actually claim it was a conscientious plan. It just automatically happened that way because that’s the way I pictured it in my head, anyway.

This is the final leaf, and I did something slightly different with it.

Besides adding green and yellow to the leaf, I used stem stitch for the veins. On the previous leaves, I used whipped backstitch. Why the switch?

Two reasons:

1. The leaf struck me as so large compared to the others, that I figured a heavier veined area would help fill it out a bit more. I used three strands of floss for the stem stitched veins.

2. Stem stitch is just quicker, and I was tired of doing the whipped backstitch (which, incidentally, is not backstitch, but reversed running stitch. It just looks like backstitch – you can read about that switch here, and why I switched to reversed running stitch).

The second reason for the switch is not necessarily a good reason. That’s the Lazy Mary approach. She shows up on this project frequently.

The above is the whipped backstitch-but-really-reversed-running-stitch, compared to the previous photo, which shows the heaver, 3-strand stem stitch.

You can definitely see the difference up close!

But from far away? You’d have to know what you were looking for. Most people would never notice the difference on a table linen like this.

The only thing that’s given me – both sides of me, including Lazy Me – pause is the incorporation of the lighter green / yellow combination on the middle leaf.

From a distance, because it is not as dark as the leaves around it, there may not be enough contrast in the lighter green / yellow combo and the ground fabric. The leaf is not quite as visible as those around it.

I like the addition of the green / yellow. It is typical of the autumn color change here in Kansas. But I’m wondering if I should have incorporated another slightly darker color in with those, to make the outline of that leaf a little more pronounced.

But of course, Lazy Mary has spoken up and declared she’s probably not going to pick it out and re-stitch it.

Fortunately, my other half knows there’s a compromise.

If I really want to accentuate the outline of that particular leaf with a slightly darker color to provide more contrast against the ground fabric, I could go in with another color and whip the stem stitch. This would be much faster than removing stitches and re-stitching, and again, it’s a solution that most people would not notice at all unless they knew what they were looking for.

We’ll see.

In person, I think the leaves look ok. And I do like the incorporation of the green / yellow. I will use that combination again on other leaves scattered on the runner. But I might just add a slightly darker shade in with it to accentuate the line a bit better.

Colors

For the most part, I’m using DMC Variations on this project. The only solid colors I’ve used so far are browns – 420, 975, and 801 – which I’ve mixed in with the Variations here and there, depending on how dark I want a line.

The Variations I’ve been using so far are 4124, 4128, 4130, 4070, and 4073. There are some other fallish Variations I may mix in eventually, too, like 4126 and 4122. And if I need to balance things out or smooth out some of the colors (to avoid too much color shifting along a line), I may incorporate some other solids.

And there you have it: progress on my autumn runner. It’s a fun project – I enjoy working on it!

I hope you’re hooked into some needlework that you’re enjoying just as much! It’s a three-day weekend here in the States, so I plan to get some house projects done. But in between, I’ll be stitching away on this project, too.

Have a lovely weekend!