Wednesday, March 22, 2017

"Oh Ashley, I love you, I love you, I do"


Everyone remembers "that beautiful love scene" as Rhett refers to it a few moments later (after a vase is hurdled over his head I might add) that profession of love between Scarlett and Ashley that repeats in periodic scenes throughout the movie. It's the first scene where we get a glimpses of what Ashley Wilkes is really made of. Excuse me if I'm underwhelmed. I've devoured the book and I've seen the movie hundreds of times but I still can't wrap my head around what Scarlett's infatuation is all about, why didn't he just cut her loose right then??... but we wouldn't have such a great story I suppose... but that being said, it will be interesting to see how my personal lack of enamor for the "elegant Mr. Wilkes" plays into my stitch selections. 

He certainly can't stand out like Scarlet does. It's during antebellum after all, we have to let the ladies steal the show! It wouldn't be gentlemanly otherwise. Luckily though this character is pale and always seemed to fade into the background so I'm going to respect that and keep him true to character by stitching him in a rather quiet way to balance out the ladies. 

I used a much paler shade for the bulk of Ashley's skin; Vineyard Conch C-136 using  Splendor S896 and S1147 to highlight and define his skin and S1149 for his cheek color. Speaking of skin colors, if you haven't acquired the Splendor skin cards, I would highly recommend seeking them out. There is Blush which is what I pulled from on this and Bronze color ways (which we will see later). They are a must-have in my opinion for anyone stitching people regularly. It is so convenient for shading to have so many flesh-tones on one card and the colors on each coordinate so well together so it takes a lot of the guess work out of choosing shades.

His lips were stitched with four strands of Splendor S1041. I tent stitched them and then wrapped them but I wasn't satisfied with how they turned out so I wrapped them again in the opposite direction.

His hair is stitched a similar way as we stitched Scarlett (you can read about that HERE) using Vineyard Snapdragon C-049. 

Ashley's shirt is stitched in white Splendor S802 doing a Cashmere stitch to follow the shape. The collar is stitched in a skip tent using the same white Splendor. The shirt stripes are stitched in S947 and I first stitched one long stitch down the entire stripe coming up in the bottom left and going through the canvas at the top right of the stripe and then basketweave over that long stitch, this gives the stripe a subtle lift. The vest is stitched with three stands of DMC Floche 800 in Diagonal Mosaic and Reverse Diagonal Mosaic and I used Steel Grey High Luster Kreinik 010HL using French knots for the vest buttons. The tie is stitched using Neon Rays N01 in brick stitch over two. There again, I played with stitch direction to add dimension and the knot area of the tie is vertical brick and the two sides were done in horizontal brick. 

Now this brings me to a decision, what to do about the areas where one element goes into another shown in the areas circled below.



On the left Scarlett's hair bow will be in front, as will Melanie's veil on the right. I will be doing the hair bows in silk ribbons when I am almost done the entire piece and the veil will be something fabulous but I don't want to reveal my plans just yet, but I want it to be on top of Ashley's suit jacket so I'm going to stitch the suit jacket right on top of both areas covering them up and keep a photo to reference so I know what goes where later on. First, I back stitched the outlines of his lapels and wrapped the back stitching using the Neon Rays N01 and then the bulk of Ashley's suit jacket was stitched using Splendor S889 in Byzantine #2 (from the book Stitches for Effects) stitch on the left and then I reversed the direction on the right-hand side. Playing with direction is a very easy way to add some dimension and interest without making the piece too busy and it is an interesting way to visually break up areas that are the same color or stitched in the same thread. 

So going back to the beginning of my post about Mr. Wilkes, when I think of him, I usually associate him with books, maybe it's because that first love scene with Scarlett seemed to be in a library. My second favorite book happens to be Gone with the Wind and although I read it digitally, I have a much loved edition that just so happens to look like my magnet I mentioned in a previous post. And what is that saying about what you love you have to give away?? Well, in the spirit of that saying, I have a magnet and a matching needle case that I'm going to give away as a set. How do you win them? Please comment below on who your favorite Gone with the Wind character is and why, please also include your email address. Contest closes at 4 PM on April 7th. On April 8th, everyone's name will go in a bowl and one of our needlepoint students at B.F. Goodstitch will draw the name of the winner (it could be you!). The winner will be contacted by email. Duplicate comments will only be entered once.

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