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In my two color classes with Mary Ellen Searcy, I became well acquainted with Stephen Quiller’s excellent book, Color Choices. Mrs. Searcy had translated the Quiller [Color] Wheel to floss colors. I stitched many of the class samples for her 1998 San Diego Seminar course. This extra experience played a decisive role in the genesis of the piece I entered in the Seminar Exhibit in Albuquerque. From my early childhood through my completion of college, each year our family camped 30 miles above Creede, and I have always loved the town of Creede, Colorado. I open Quiller’s book often to the picture on pages 50-51, and it brings happy memories flooding back.

Trying to use only the colors Mr. Quiller used was impossible, as Prussian blue and cadmium red colors in thread do not meld as they do in watercolor medium. I resorted to using analogous blues to delineate the mountain slopes and sky. I dropped the burnt sienna and used only burnt umber for the complement. As I stitched, I found it advantageous that I knew the terrain. By the time I completed the late twilight sky to the moonlit peaks of the Continental Divide where the Rio Grande begins its journey to the Gulf of Mexico and had Bristol Head stitched, the excitement of the color development overcame the monotony of the tent stitch.

The second part of the genesis of the project came from past articles in Needle Pointers and Piecework about the Front Gallery Series stitched by Lloyd Walden Blanks. Mr. Blanks stitched on 10-count canvas and used Persian yarn. He “needle-mixed” three strands of different colored strands, then stitched vertically, skipping every other intersection. He then used another combination of colors and filled in the skipped spaces. Although I used two strands of floss on Congress cloth, I found I could get the same depth of feeling Mr. Blanks achieved in his landscapes of the Texas Panhandle. Most of the families of colors I used had six to nine values. To avoid a flat surface on the slopes, I “graded” the distribution of color to show subtle variations in the surface texture. In some areas, I increased the number of different color values to six by “skip-stitching” every two intersections. I found it easier to stitch the fill-in stitches horizontally.

I wrapped the thread combinations on cards before stitching, as Mary Fry suggested at my first Seminar in Kansas City in 1989. I frequently placed the picture where I planned to hang it as and I studied the progress. Despite everything, I still had an abundance of unstitching to do. However, in some cases I could add a third strand intermittently to get the right effect. Basketweave, continental stitching, and same-two-colored-threads were mainly confined to areas requiring demarcation, such as the trees, town, and crevasses. My mother’s photograph albums yielded black and white pictures of mountains that were excellent sources for realistic shading. I found an overdyed yellow that gave the right “shimmer of life” to the windows of the tiny houses. By the way, the picture had to be that large so I could stitch the tiny house and impart the majesty of the mountains that surround this historic mining town.

On the day I visited Mr. Quiller in his studio in downtown Creede (not visible in the picture) and received his permission to adapt his picture to needlepoint, I drove to the area where he made his initial sketches. While he did exercise some artistic license with the landscape, it resulted in a good composition counterbalanced with a strong value contrast between the snow-capped San Juan Mountains on the upper right and the town on the lower left. Even so, it is easy to know where to drive to reach the old silver mines in North Creede.

I learned a great deal about color from teachers at various seminars, but I learned even more in the execution of this piece. Would I ever do this much tent stitch again? Of course…but the next time I think I’ll do an analogous scheme with a split-complement or a triadic scheme and incorporate some self-dyed threads. Would I do another scene from the San Juans? Well, since Mr. Quiller and I discovered we both favored the same strip of the river (where Bear and Pole creeks join as the headwaters of the Rio Grande), I think I need to return there to be sure he hasn’t caught my share of the trout. Then, after I catch my limit, I might look around and find my own picture of life at the top of Colorado and try for another rose.