There are colour combinations that just work. You know the ones: you see them together and something clicks. For Solana, that combination is cobalt blue and bright orange. Sharp, warm, graphic. The kind of palette that doesn't ask permission.
Solana is a new micro collection of hand-embroidered jewellery, and it's built entirely around these two colours, expressed in two very different design directions.
Two Designs. One Palette.
The collection has two distinct looks, and I love that they share a palette but feel completely different in character.
The Solana Abstract Lines design is loose and graphic. Flowing cobalt linework is embroidered across a white ground, with a solid block of bright orange satin stitch occupying one side of the frame. The result is something that feels part textile design, part abstract artwork, and genuinely unlike anything I've made before. The squiggle lines have an energy to them; they move.
The Solana Leopard Print design takes the exact same cobalt and orange and does something unexpected with them. The leopard marks are bold and painterly, worked in chunky cobalt satin stitch with bright orange centres and gaps. This is not a subtle leopard print. It's hand-embroidered, stitch by stitch, into a design that looks more like a contemporary artwork than a traditional animal print. It's confident and a little bit wild.
Both designs are available as earrings and as a pendant necklace, which means you can wear them separately or as a matching set.
The Pieces
Each piece is set in a gold-plated half-moon frame, a shape that gives the embroidery a clean, contained presentation while still feeling modern and wearable.
The earrings hang from a slim gold bar stud at approximately 5cm total length: long enough to have presence, short enough to wear every day.
The necklaces sit on a fine gold satellite chain at 50cm, which places the pendant at the lower throat, a really wearable length that works under an open collar or against a clean neckline.
On the Palette
I've been working with cobalt and orange for a while now, and there's something about this combination that keeps pulling me back. They're complementary colours, opposites on the colour wheel, which gives them that inherent tension and energy. But cobalt blue in particular has a richness to it that orange can't help but respond to.
What I wanted with Solana was to explore what that palette could do in two completely different design contexts. Abstract and loose in one. Bold and patterned in the other. Same threads, different story.
Shop the Solana Collection
The full Solana collection, Abstract Lines and Leopard Print in earrings and necklaces, is available now.
As always, these are hand-embroidered in small batches. If something catches your eye, I'd recommend not waiting.
Want to see how the Leopard Print design came together in the hoop? Head to Instagram @themodernstitchstudio for a behind-the-stitches look at the making process.
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