As I mentioned yesterday, one of the other Level 1 JTA requirements was an S12 ball done with in uwagake chidori kagari, or the kiku herringbone stitch, which is my favorite. Weirdly, though I had lots of other markings with that stitch, (see Purple Passion (second ball in that post), Blue Mum, and even Peacock,) I didn’t have any on a 12, so I whipped up this one.
Fire Flower
This one owes a lot to Purple Passion, probably obviously, but it’s a more traditionally done version. The background is again a variegated thread, but it’s more subtle than the purple one I used for the other ball, so I’m not sure it shows up well here. The leaves are longer than the petals still, but don’t cross the equator line. Both the leaves and the petals shade from light to dark, and the petals got a further outline in the gold metallic thread used to mark the divisions. This ball also got an obi around the equator.
Fire Flower, three-quarters view
The obi is fine, but I never feel like I’m doing anything very special on these. One nice thing about this one was I felt like I got the wrapped band ends to blend into the whole better than usual, so that’s something. I probably need to actually spend some time experimenting with wrapped bands designs and more interesting obis, but there’s always something else more complicated to stitch!
Fire Flower, obi view
This last picture I took just to illustrate one of the ways I amuse myself when designing/stitching balls, in that I offset the designs on each side. I’m sure some people would prefer a perfectly symmetrical ball, identical on both sides, but I’ve always preferred this. Of course, once you start crossing the equator, it becomes necessary if you don’t want overlapping designs.
So there you go, a very bright ball to brighten up this December a bit.
