Telling Stories Through the Needle's Eye: "In the Garden"

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

"In the Garden"—Rose

Happy Valentine's Day! In the spirit of the holiday, we stitched a rose for our garden this month. Whether the red rose signifies love or warm, summer days for you, who doesn't enjoy the beauty of this perennial floral favorite?

While the rose is made with wool, the buds are created using wired ribbon, adding a different texture, and of course, a bit of fun! We also added beads around the bloom for a bit of sparkle—a hint of early morning sun shining of dew drops, perhaps.

This new block in our In the Garden Block of the Month series is now available on our website, and it comes with the ribbon needed to stitch the buds and calyxes. Here are a few highlights of the rose.

The leaves are placed and appliquéd, and then the rose petals. Each petal is surrounded by a chain stitch. A feather stitch creates the leaf veins, and a blanket stitch with the spokes going outward toward the tip form the serration of the leaves.

The folded rosebud used a 2-inch piece of wired ribbon. From the center point, each half is folded down at a 45-degree angle, so that the edges meet.

front

back

Using the wired edge on the back, fold down again to shape the ribbon bud so that it will fit neatly behind the sepal pieces.

For the smaller bud, use a 3/4-inch piece of ribbon. Fold raw edges under as pictured below, and then angled, so that it will be covered by the wool piece.

When the buds are the desired shape and size, place them on the background and tack them so they are secure, but the stitches will not be seen. Appliqué the wool sepal pieces on top of the ribbon buds with matching thread.

Using hand-dyed 4mm-wide silk ribbon, twist your ribbon and do a
long straight stitch to create the small stems between the rose and the buds.

Create the small leaves at the base of the buds using a ribbon stitch with that same ribbon.
Using wool thread, do small feather stitches randomly around the buds.

Two bullion stitches top the smaller bud, but you could also use the twisted ribbon, if you choose. Finally, attach size 15 red seed beads randomly within the chain stitches around the rose petals.

We had a great time making our roses bloom in our class at
Primitive Homespuns Wool & Needleworks...

...and we were excited to see what next month will bring to our gardens!

And the winner is...

We were thrilled by the number of people who responded to our Facebook giveaway last week. There were so many fabulous suggestions of flora and fauna for garden stitching that our heads are absolutely spinning with ideas! Our congratulations go to our lucky winner, chosen randomly by our random name picker:

Delores Wall

Please contact us with your mailing address, Delores, and we will send you your patterns. Congrats! We hope you enjoy stitching them!!

If you would like to join us In the Garden, all the patterns for the first five months are now available on our website: needleseyestories.com. Any ribbon needed to complete the patterns is included with the pattern. Our newest addition is, of course, the Rose.