The Ionian Mission - Geoff Hunt - Updated 1/19/17

[seedreemer]

Well, by "HAED" type I meant solid stitching that covers almost all the fabric. What is this type called anyway??

[SteveM]

I believe that it is "full coverage" which most people encounter for the first time with a HAED pattern. My eyes were opened to both full coverage and custom made patterns such as this one via a post on a non-stitch forum which someone shared their nautical cross stitch work (also from a Geoff Hunt painting). She was using 150 solid colors which blew my mind at the time.

[Allyn]

I call it "solid-stitched." To me, "full coverage" means each stitch is full enough that no fabric peeks through around the edges of the stitch. I don't know if there is an official term for it.

Yeah, I remember when 100 colors was awe-inspiring for me. Now, I don't even want to look at a pattern if it has less than 100 colors with at least 3/4 of them being blends.

[richardandtracy]

Now that I know you don't have to have them, when doing photo conversions, I really dislike seeing colour contours. 100 or more colours seems to be the minimum number of colours for decent colour representation with a relatively low tonal range photo, increasing to the 350 of Steve's image here, and it's extreme level of colour matching. Simply awe inspiring. It does, however, make much of the stuff I stitched prior to joining this forum seem like such a complete waste of my time.

I do wonder if anyone is nutty enough to break the 447 barrier...

Regards,

Richard.

[seedreemer]

I'm in total awe of 100 colors, so this one is absolutely incredible. Anyway, looking forward to following along on your full coverage masterpiece, Steve.

[Lulu22]

What a grand design this will be absolutely stunning and I will be following your progress

[SteveM]

Anchor 231 and DMC 453 are considered equivalents and side by side you have to look very closely under bright light to see any difference. So naturally I'm using a strand of each in one of my blends.

[wendywombat]

Any new pictures of the Awesome project?
I think it must be the Challenge of a Lifetime!!!

[Allyn]

Anchor 231 and DMC 453 are considered equivalents and side by side you have to look very closely under bright light to see any difference. So naturally I'm using a strand of each in one of my blends.

Color matching, baby, it's all about color matching.

[richardandtracy]

I have added a menu option to the image conversion unit of BlendThreads with you in mind, Steve.

Felt like calling it the 'Insanity' setting but opted for 'Settings| Allow Extreme Colour Numbers' instead.

It bypasses the programmed in limits on the conversion, setting the colour space divisions to 254, switches on blends, dithering, switches off the auto colour merge and literally throws everything at the conversion. The original image gave a result of over 7000 colours from 370 thread colours when using the DMC range.

Regards,

Richard.

[SteveM]

Here it is wendywombat - 2/3 of page 1 done, 3200 stitches, and not a single solid color stitch.


As you can see I picked up a fabric marking pen and am testing it near the edge. The packaging says not to leave it on for an extended period of time so I'm a bit wary.

Richard, that does sound like insanity, but you never know because the bigger the design the more colors can be used without getting confetti heavy. You've actually reminded me of a feature request I had. An adjustable means to give preference to a solid color over a blend even if the blend is a better match. The net effect being that as this weight is increased the number of blends in a pattern goes down. I'm not minding the blending, but in some cases like with Anchor 231 (189,174,170) and DMC 453 (215,206,203) it seems that either would have sufficed in a less demanding pattern.

Now about those tenterhooks. There I was at 2000 stitches done when I sat back and compared my stitching to the image and... was excited to see how the details were coming out nicely and the colors starting to look like they belong. It's still too small to look like a sail, but I now have confidence that it will turn out very well indeed. I couldn't have done it without Richard's software.

[richardandtracy]

Steve,

I will think about your request & how it could be implemented. It's another 'advanced, techie' level of control that is likely to be worth hiding from casual vision.

The way I'm envisaging it at the moment is a menu option called 'Preferentially select Solid Colours', calling up a sub-menu with entries such as 'With Max 1.5x Blend Error', 'With Max 2x Blend Error','With Max 2.5x Blend Error' and 'With Max 3x Blend Error', and in all cases select the solid colour if a solid colour error is less than 4, 13, 22 & 49 respectively (this is 1 + 3 * 1^2, 1 + 3 * 2^2, 1 + 3 * 3^2 and 1 + 3 * 4^2 based on an error from the desired colour of 1, 2, 3 or 4 in each of the RGB components - the error values are squared to normalise them to positive numbers and not subsequently square-rooted to save time).

It will add to the conversion time, no doubt, but I agree it'll be useful.

Regards,

Richard.

Edited to add:
I was so caught up in the programming request I forgot to comment on the stitching .
It is actually looking perfect. The stitches are even and all the sail wrinkles/ropes are perfectly visible as per the original image. Magnificent.

[wendywombat]

Thank you!

You are 'sailing along' nicely I see!

I can see you becoming Master Blender of the stitching world after this!

[lavenderbee]

Really loving stitching, well done. So intricate neatly stitched. Look forward to next update on this one

[rcperryls]

Beautiful update and excellent progress!

Carole

[karen4bells]

Beautiful update and excellent progress!

Carole

I absolutely agree!!

[SteveM]

Thank you again to everyone that has posted kind comments. Just 5 weeks after starting and I've got my first page finish. They are only 60x80 stitches or 4800 stitches compared to 7000+ for a standard HAED page.

My completed page with the array of 28 blended threads used in this page. Some were only used for a handful of stitches so the confetti level wasn't all that high. Below that is the mockup for page 1 blown up 800% so we can see if the stitching looks anything like the predicted result. This photo was taken with my stitching lamp illuminating the work which I think gave a more accurate white balance, but the photo is a bit darker than it should be so I might tweak it a bit in the morning when I'm fresh (Done).


Several of the blends are very close in color and when looking at a few stitches up close I wonder why bother with so may colors. Then I remember Ally's comment about shades and when I lean back and look at the whole I see it does matter a lot.

[lavenderbee]

fabulous update. My mind boggles with all the colours & shades but this will be magnificent when completed.

[vanessanjf]

Fantastic work

[wendywombat]

fabulous update. My mind boggles with all the colours & shades but this will be magnificent when completed.

It will indeed be a masterpiece!