Winged Triforce - WIP #1

Right, down to business … how does one go about making a Blackwork pattern?

I have amassed lots of patterns over the last few years so I started looking through those to see which would be the best technique to use. Some of the designs use threads in different thicknesses to give the impression of shading, but I thought that for my first project that might be likened to trying to run before you can walk, so I scrapped that idea pretty early on.

A popular technique, which is used over on my favourite Blackwork website (http://www.needlework-tips-and-techniques.com/index.html) and in the Anchor Book of Blackwork is to stitch the outlines in 2 strands of thread and the fill patterns in 1 strand.

I bought the book at the Stitch show in London last year and it has to be one of the best books I have ever bought. As well as having some really good patterns in it, there are over 40 fill patterns to choose from! For this design, I am using three fill patterns; one each for the wings, talons and body:

The next step is to chart the image. I did think about tracing the reference image at first. The image was too small to make an effective template for a chart … but, a solution was at hand!

As a rule, I don’t normally stitch designs that have been imported into my software as I like to chart my patterns from hand. However, I do use the import function to give me an idea of a sprite’s size and dimensions, as well as seeing what colours the software will pick – it can be quite useful ;)

The Winged Triforce was one design that had been imported into Jane Greenoff’s Pattern Maker 2 for that very reason, but at that time I didn’t do anything with it. Fortunately, it was saved and I had also printed the chart for future reference so I was able to use that as my starting point:

The dimensions are a whopping 140 x 220 stitches!

Tracing the image was not an option because, again, the finished size would be too small to make the pattern look effective so I decided to keep the dimensions given by the Jane Greenoff’s Pattern Maker 2 software.

As the design was technically already on a grid, it was easy for to me to chart the design onto graph paper. To save time, only one wing and one talon were charted – this could be “flipped” later once it had been imported into my charting software.

Each component was charted separately and then copied into the main design. Adding the fill patterns in their entirety would be time consuming so only small areas of the patterns were added to give me a starting point, but I drafted a separate chart with the more detailed fill patterns on it for reference!

Finally a double border has been added using gold thread and finished off with gold beads!