Temari: Purples & Greens

Both of the temari I sold at the craft fair had a few things in common: they were some of my favorite temari that I’ve ever done, and they were both done in greens and purples.

First, my Continuous Path/Labyrinth ball:

Solid green side

The stitching path used on this ball is actually called hito hude gake, which translates to roughly “one stroke”, because you stitch the whole thing as one continuous path. (English-speaking stitchers usually refer to it as the HHG stitch.) In the case of this ball, (a complex 10 division,) it’s really more like two paths, because I started on one side of the ball with one full 5-pointed round of the variegated green thread (see picture), and then worked around to the other side of the ball by going almost all the way around each successive pentagon without ever touching any other green point, eventually getting down to the next to last pentagon with only two half-sides of green. That ended that half of the pathway, and I switched to the purple thread to trace back and complete all the unfinished points. This makes the path itself something you can follow around the ball with your eyes (and fingers), making it an activity akin to walking a labyrinth. I traced around each path 5 times, building up nice thick lines of color, and creating those interlocked diamond points.

The solid purple side

I really like doing HHG balls with two different colors like this, because then you can really see all the different ways the paths meet and intersect. Sometimes the intersecting diamonds are divided horizontally, sometimes vertically. I also like using variegated threads on these, because then there ends up being a lot of interesting color changes throughout the ball, even though I was stitching it all with one continuous thread. (Not that I ever had enough thread to do the whole ball on my needle at once, but you get my point.)

The other ball that sold was probably my favorite one that I’ve ever thought up and stitched myself. I really loved the way it turned out. It actually started as a core that I had wrapped a long time ago with some really cool variegated purple serger thread I found by chance at JoAnn’s. I really liked the way it looked, but I couldn’t think of the right design to stitch on it, so I put it aside. Many months later, I decided it was time to use it. I got out some fat sparkly purple braid for marking thread and ended up with a simple 16 division. I left off the obi line at the center because I decided I wanted the design to cross from one side to the other.

Here you can see how I started with bright green leaves, shaded from light to dark, crossing that imaginary equator line of the ball on alternating lines:

Leaves crossing the obi line

Once I had the leaves in place, they really seemed to glow against the darker purple background, and I loved it. I started to get nervous about what I would choose for the flower part of the design, because the ball already looked so good! Since the variegated wrap had both shades of purple and dark pink in it, there were two ways I could go, but since I’d chosen a purple marking thread, I decided to stay on that end of things. For extra contrast with the leaves, and to prevent the outside edges of the petals from fading into the background wrap, I decided to shade the flowers from dark to light.

Flower, center view

Although I rarely do the same ball twice, I think I’ll have to recreate this one to keep for myself. Once again, just playing around with a ball has paid off for me, and the person who bought it at the craft fair seemed to agree!

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