OY! OY! Understood!

I'm confused. You said "trying to avoid stitching a lot of dark background, and so figuring on letting the fabric be the "no need to stitch" color. If that's the case, why aren't you choosing a dark color? Then you wouldn't have to stitch the dark background behind the wine bottle.

She's trying to choose a color to complement and add contrast the purples in the bottle, the green of the leaves and the colors of the lemons...the background area. :) Dark colors are also more difficult to stitch for some people...she has a time issue, I think. :)

Thanks VCESS. I must have missed earlier conversations. I'm whipped, heading for bed. Will talk to you all tomorrow and then Yeah! A weekend of stitching. . . .

Mostly I just hate DMC dark colors for coverage. My bad, but it drives me nuts. If I do the dark background, I'll probably do it with three strands--either that or pick up some cosmo for the darkest colors. It's expensive, but I love to stitch with it, and the coverage is great.

Ready? Because then it would be a vast expanse of the white part over black. I don't mind it in general, but when there is a really big chunk of the piece that is high contrast, mostly black on white or vice versa, I never like the way it looks. I used to think it was just me, but I saw some other people's work in a shop the other day, and it didn't look any better to me. I am the queen of "fussy fruit-loops."

I would pick a background of a sky blue, so that this "still life" (probably very still if I drank an entire bottle of wine) would have the background that looks like the sky...not a super light ice blue, but a more medium sky blue. It would make one think that the wine and lemons are in front of a window. I think a blue will coordinate with the purples of the wine and contrast with the yellow of the lemons. That is truly what this thread artist would do, but I'm not stitching it...you are.

Okay ginnaB, here's my thoughts. The desert cream would be too much but I think I'm liking the touch of yellow. I found a larger picture of what you're wanting to work and copied it in a Word doc, then compressed sides of the Word doc so I could look at the aida colors next to my picture, I mean your picture. In fact I have the picture up now & am looking at it while I type this message. Do you have the pattern already? The white that's behind the wine glass, is it stitched? And what about the white of the label on the bottle? So many things to consider. I'm not so sure about the suggestion of a blue sky; instead the touch of yellow could be the soft lighting of a romantic evening or an evening of laughter and warmth among friends. I'm sure whatever you decide on will work out just fine.