Re-visiting one of my first rug designs

Today, I wanted to post about one of my first designs when I was learning about color and pattern.  I saw the original picture of a life-sized Aubusson style rug and really wanted to design and stitch this rug.  The original had a dark red background.
At this point I was still learning how to use my design program and quickly found out that it didn't work to allow the program to do the work and design the rug.  The program used way too many colors and many of the colors were either too dark or not suitable for the rug.  Therefore, I found out how to import the photo of the original under a clear grid and designed the rug by hand, choosing the colors I wanted and creating the patterns myself. 
I found it very difficult to create the flowers and when I was finished designing the rug, I still wasn't happy with it.  I set it aside but never really forgot about it.  This year, after a 2 year break, I got out the old pattern and began to re-design practically everything about it.  Finally, I was happy with the results!  The first rug on the left is the design I worked with.  The red thread is a dark red but it doesn't so up that way on the computer. 

Once I had the original pattern designed to my satisfaction, I tried creating it in other colors.  As I love blue rugs, I, of course, had to design a blue one.  This one was a challenge because I couldn't figure out what accent colors to put with it.  I finally decided on a pallet of greys and they worked well with the dark blue I had chosen.  

Next, I thought a pale color would look good since I often see pale Aubusson style rugs and love the way they look.  Peach, pink and pale blue did not work at all with the flowers I had in the rug, so I turned my eyes to a green pallet.  Green is a very difficult color to work with as there are greens with a blue tone to them and greens with a yellow tone to them.  All of the other colors around them have to blend correctly with the tone you have chosen or it will look terrible.  After much agonizing about the colors, I was finally able to choose a green and accent colors that worked well for this rug.

In the past, I was able to directly substitute one color for another in the original pattern but I was unable to do that with this rug.  Therefore, each pattern had to be completely separate items as the graphs wouldn't line up from one to the other.
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Now, after a long time on the virtual drawing board, my patterns are now ready for listing! Check them out in my Etsy store: Double the Fun Crafts.