Igenlode Wordsmith

I've spent the past two or three days preparing to set up another tapestry project; I now know why most people buy a kit with pre-printed canvas and pre-selected wool colours!

The idea was to use up some of the embarrassment of odd tapestry wools that is currently cluttering up my wardrobe. The design (the easiest bit!) was taken from an oil painting of my grandmother's, just to keep it in the family. I then transferred this to a plan on squared paper (also fairly easy; clearly I haven't lost the knack in the last twenty years) and coloured it roughly, using all the pencils I could find hanging around -- a little more tricky, given the unpromising assortment of colours surviving!

Then for the really slow bit....

• Create bitmap image at one pixel per square, counting furiously (it took me three goes to get this right) and choosing vaguely suitable colours out of the 256 available, trying to match (a) the original painting (b) the blended pencils.
  
  
• Trace bitmap image to get a scalable colour graphic. Set fill to 'none', outlines to 'black', and print out monochrome version for annotation.
  
  
• Set to work on coloured version, naming all colours and trying to reduce to a minimal set (I got it down to 26 in the end, at least half of which are only used in one or two places...)
  
  
• Match up screen/painting colour with actual available selection of wools -- very slow! (I knew I had a lot of greens, which is why I picked this subject; didn't realise I had so few browns, which is a problem. I may have to buy in something to cope with the faded reds...) Unfortunately this task can only be carried out by daylight, since electric light gives a tremendous yellow cast to call the colours.
  
  
• Make out template of named colours, each with a little snippet of wool attached, and paint in matching segments on monochrome version (leaving gaps on darker colours for annotation by name later -- but doing it by symbols alone is quite unreadable, I find; paint is a better guide)
  

I'm still working on the last part, having been overtaken by dusk yet again!
Only after completing this task, and having a usable pattern-cum-colour-chart that doesn't require the computer to be switched on, can I actually set needle to canvas. Of course, ideally if the design were good, you'd mass-produce it and get back your time and labour that way. (The actual picture will be tiny, about postcard-sized, so I strongly suspect the design is too complex. We'll see.)

The last time I did this I had no computer, and went straight from the squared-paper stage to the buying of the wool; hence rather fewer colours to contend with, as I was buying everything from scratch and it wasn't worth paying for extra shades. Next time I think I may skip the computer and go straight to painting/marking-up the squared design -- much faster, and only a little less flexible....