More Knitted Roses and other stuff

Recently I took a look over all my ‘unfinished projects’, in their neat transparent wallets and was a little dismayed.  How could I have accumulated so many??  Astonishingly the one, or two “distractions”, have turned into a couple of arms full.  This is not a situation I can accommodate for much longer, as the drawer is now too full to close properly.  There are multiple, groaning half-loved creations, fighting their way into the daylight again….

Being bright April once more, when everything is really waking up from the long Winter, I had to whip up some pronto gifts.  Reluctant to start something too fiddly, I decided to rustle up a bag charm and corsage.

The patterns can be found in Nicky Epstein’s Knitted Flowers – a favourite book of mine that I like to  pour over when my brain is on overload.

But first, here’s a picture of the smallest shape I have made so far using the ‘Bordered Turns’ technique described in Elizabethan Stitches. 

Oh, by the way, if you have a copy of that book already, I’d (um) like to direct you to the acknowledgements page at the front – it makes for very interesting reading….(cough, cough)

Although this orange petal is just a small doodle cloth rendition, notice how you can achieve a finer tip, that tilts slightly to the right.  Now that I have gotten the hang of what goes where, I can see that this is a much faster way to work.

When I return to the Peacock motif, I look forward very much to using this technique to stitch his tiny beak.  On the subject of the Peacock, unfortunately I had a little accident with his neighbour and to cut a long story short, I needed to do this:

Yes, a highly disconcerting mishap to say the least!  Never mind, its not the end of the world.  Perhaps, when I was a tad younger, I may have just thrown the whole thing in the bin but instead, I’ve decided to use this section of the design as a slip and shall be stitching it to another piece of linen.  The difficulty with that trick is, that the white ground fabric will, in all probability, poke out from somewhere or other.  So I decided to obviate that threat and simply couch a black outline all the way round with fine gold thread, as I have seen done at the V&A.

I want to keep this post short, so let’s talk knitted flowers !!

First, I made this bag charm…

 

I had a little accident with that too, in that after stitching it to the backing, it started to buckle.  Again, this was not the disaster you might think, in that by doing that, it means the piece is much more 3-dimensional than usual.  Because usually, all the weight is at the front and it tends to pull forward after you have attached it to the handle of your bag.  Thus, the backing becomes very visible.  This tendency is most annoying, so instead, this serendipitous buckling, means you can appreciate the design from above as well – OK, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it !!!

This is the back…

As you can see, I made the back a little shabby chic.

Then I made this little single rose…

It’s very small and involves the ‘360 degree left needle manoeuvre’.

For the backing, I used leftover interfaced floral fabric (see Kindle Cover) then a quick round of blanket stitches, completed with a brooch pin..

  

Gotta go ppl !

P.S.… I hope to have some further news on my Plaited Braid Stitch research soon….

 

Technorati Tags: Bordered Turns,Corded Detached Buttonhole,Knitted Rose,Corsage,Peacock feathers