At long last, my phase 3 piece has arrived, and I can tell you all about it! For phase 3, I chose Hiogi, which is actually a combined phase 2/3, but it has a lot of phase 3 techniques that I want to learn — cords, superimposed work, and some additional novel effects. Plus, it will give me a chance to improve my round and round couching. But I decided to make a few alternations to the original design. 😊
This is what the original Hiogi looks like:
I actually really like the fan, but the snowflakes confuse me. Why are they there? If it's snowing, do you really need a fan? Isn't it cool enough? And if they're supposed to indicate that that's the kind of chill breeze you're getting from waving the fan around, all I can say is that hand fans on a hot day don't achieve anything approaching freezing temperatures — at least not in Arizona.
I also think five paulownia leaves is too many. There are both five-leaf and four-leaf versions of this fan. Although the five-leaf fan is apparently much coveted in certain circles, it feels a little cluttered and busy to me, so I asked my tutor to get me the design with four leaves and no snowflakes. And since she has all kinds of mad skills and resources, that's exactly what she did:
This is the design all framed up. It's nice. I really like it. But I'm going to make one more alteration. The cherry blossoms are lovely, but I wanted something a bit more geometric to tie in with all the other geometric patterns in the piece.
Instead of the cherry blossoms, I want to do a hexagonal pattern with Hanabishi flowers in the lower cloud. Before the phase 3 materials arrived, I created a little sketch of my plans:
It's by no means exact, but it gives the general idea. I've been warned that the hexagons with Hanabishi flowers are tricky to do, but I saw this design on another JE piece, and I think it's super cool. So I'm going to give it a try, and we'll just see how it goes. (I may bitterly regret my hubris at some point. 😂)
I chose my color scheme for this design with the help of the sketch, my JEC and Midori color cards, and some colored pencils. Here's kind of what I'm going for:
These colors aren't exact because I only have so many colored pencils. But you can see that I want a lot of teals and coppery colors, with a few golds, greens, and lavenders thrown in for variety. I think it will be bright and cheerful and very different from my last fan.
Here's the design printed on white Shioze with all the colors I've chosen:
There will be both JEC colors and Midori colors in this piece, which is why a few spools are different lengths and widths. I'm also using Midori's #1 and #4 coppers because she was the only person I could get them both from (the JEC discontinued their #4 copper).
As mentioned in a previous post, because I altered the design and am using some of Midori's threads, I can't submit this piece for JEC certification. But that's totally fine with me. I didn't submit either phase 1 or phase 2 for certification either. I'm doing Japanese embroidery because I love it, so it's far more important to me to have the freedom to choose the designs and colors I want than to have anything certified. As long as I learn the techniques and skills I need to know and love the pieces I create, I will be satisfied. 😊
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