Title: Rorschach Ink Blot Test Panels 1 to 6
Date Completed: October 2019
Design: Lord Libidan
Count: 14
Canvas: White
Colours: 4
Pop Culture: Noir
 
I design patterns for the Xstitch magazine, and this issue the theme was noir. I know the themes are based on general terms to help promote a more varied selection, but I also write for the magazine, and in this issue, I spoke about black. So of course, my mind went to black for the stitch too.
 
But I couldn’t find anything I liked. I tend to stitch on black a lot, but making a dark black stitch is hard, and frankly, not very interesting. But then I happened across a set of ink blot tests in a toy store. They were full of color, but I loved the idea of a Rorschach ink blot test. Not only were they (mostly) black, but they were a pseudoscience that was very of the noir movie aesthetic and time period. It just worked.
 
The patterns didn’t really work though. My first idea was to pick just one and make it huge, but as you guessed, it was a lot of black. So I cut it down in size. But this meant it was not only non-symmetrical, a key feature of the ink blots, but it was full of shades. These shades were OK, but the way the DMC colors work, the dark colors were hued. They had blues in, or purples and they looked wrong. Finally, I made them all, pixel by pixel to get it perfect. I had to make a decision early on, with ink blot 2, as it had red in. Whilst this still fitted with the theme, I just felt it was better as black.