I had a basic design problem with Roses and Pansies that was bothering me.

This is how the piece looked the last time I blogged about it – I’d just removed the 3 major light green stems and calyxes (deciding they didn’t go with the olive leaves), removed some of the olive variegated leaves to decrease the ‘visual noise’, and inserted a copper spiderweb rose.

My problem was that the red and blue pansy fully overlaid the stem running up to the Vintage Ruffled Rose, so the stem looked like it was attached to the pansy, not the rose.

I’ve put an arrow against the relevant stem, as well as against the offending pansy.

The answer? Remove the pansy, obviously, to give the stem a clear run up to the base of the rose.

So here’s the piece, with the stems re-done in a dark green, and that stem clearly runs to the base of the Vintage Ruffled Rose. (Sorry about the colour contrast – it’s a grey day out there. I have fiddled with the settings without much luck)

I did a few other things while I was at it :

• added another couple of buds in the centre (taking it up to 5 buds), to fill up the space a bit more.
• inserted tiny stitches into the layers of the Vintage Ruffled Rose, to make to spread out a bit and lay a bit flatter. I think it looks better this way, if you compare it in the above two photos.
• inserted tiny stitches into some of the pansy petals, to get them to sit better.
• added padded calyxes to the roses and the rosebud, with the exception of the copper spiderweb rose. It didn’t look like it needed one.
• added the calyx back to the pansy bud, this time in the right green.
• added a French knot to the base of each major stem, to make it more obvious that that was the base point of each of these stems. (see photo above)
• made and inserted the first pansy leaf. In the wrong green tho– it’s too emerald. (Hey, it was 10pm by then and I’d been working for hours!) I have a more olive French Wired ribbon to hand, and I’ll simply replace it.

It’s there on the left, peeking out from under the pink and green/copper pansy.

There are going to be a lot more of these pansy leaves to act as filler, without giving the eye more to work on.

I’ve also taken a dislike to that elongated rose leaf (in variegated olive green) that the buds hang from, just below the Vintage Ruffled Rose. I might shorten it and switch it around so it’s coming from the copper spiderweb rose, and put some pansy leaves next to the pink and red pansy.

My favourite bit is this pansy bud – it’s so delicate!

I’m also happy with the way the colour variegation for the 5 buds in the interior worked out.

My plan now is to

• fix the colour of that pansy leaf
• fix the ‘long rose leaf’ situation, and
• work anti-clockwise from the purple/yellow pansy at the top, and add in extra pansies, (including a copper one to balance the copper colours already in the piece), pansy leaves, pansy buds and an extra rose bud, down around to the space below the Vintage Ruffled Rose. It’ll be mostly foliage as there are already lots of different colours.
• Then I’ll work on the bottom half of the piece, which is much sparser, consisting mostly of pansy leaves.

Do you get the impression that this is a bit of a ‘trial and play’ piece at all? Not having done much ribbon embroidery before (certainly nothing this big), not having worked with variegated colours before…..I’m really enjoying it. I’m pleased with the way it’s coming out.