Ambitious Blackwork Project #3

 

WARNING – LONG, IMAGE HEAVY POST!!!

 

Okay, technically that’s a misleading title, because this is actually my fourth blackwork project, but I wanted to stitch this one before the third one so I swopped them round. I may start the other blackwork project soon, but I don’t like having too many large projects on the go at once!

 

So without further a do, I can confirm that the subject matter for this next project is…

 

 

Yes, it’s the ShinRa Logo from Final Fantasy VII!!!

 

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Inspiration for this project came from our dear friend, “Little Mojo” who had a black and white chart on her website. I wanted to have a go at designing this logo myself, but I wanted to do the whole deal, with full lettering, and in colour!

 

I started charting this back in July 2009. I had imported the design into Jane Greenoff Pattern Creator with the plan to use this as a reference for the colours, dimensions etc…  I even started to chart it, but for what ever reason, gave up on it.

 

It wasn’t until September 2010 that I decided to have another crack at this, and that was when I decided to do it as a blackwork project rather than a cross-stitch one. To simplify things I have taken off the lettering but kept the kanji and I also decided to retain the proportions used when I started charting this into the Jane Greenoff software.

 

Here are my original Jane Greenoff patterns:

 

 

From this, I was able to re-chart the design into Pattern Maker quite quickly.

 

As with any blackwork design, you need to select your fill patterns and decide which ones are going where. With this design I have chosen two fills, which are pretty much identical. The inner diamond uses an octagon with squares and the outer square uses the same fill with an additional cross in the middle of the octagon:

 

 

I wanted to feature shading on this design as the same way I had with my lighthouse. If you look at the original design, you will see that both in the diamond and the square, it is darker at the bottom and then lighter at the top - I wanted incorporate that into this design too.

 

Obviously you need to decide what colours you use. For the diamond, I am using red shades no 22, 47 and 46 with an element of blending. The square uses brown shades no 357 and 380.

 

Different thicknesses of thread also help to give the illusion of shading. I have selected different colours on my Pattern Maker palette to represent each colour change so black represents 2 strands of 380, blue represents 2 strands of 357 and so on…

 

And, to help me follow the chart and know where the colour changes, I have split the design up into different areas – it is recommended that you use a colour that will not feature in your final design because you will be deleting it once the design is finished (I used dark pink):

 

 

The kanji lettering in the middle of the design was not easy, in fact it required some tracing of the reference image, which in turn had to be reduced so that the kanji would be the right size for the design.

 

Time consuming but worth it!

 

With the kanji lettering in place, all that remains is to complete the pattern:

 

Doing fill patterns can be quite time consuming and it also requires an element of patience to make sure that the pattern is consistent and error free. It took me several evenings to finish the design, but here is the final chart:

With the chart complete, it’s now time to start getting the materials together, and this is what I am using:

• x1 vintage-cream aida 16” x 13” (purchased from Sew and So
  
• Anchor stranded thread in shades – 2, 22, 46, 47, 295, 298, 304, 357 and 380