Rose Swirls - Updated 9/4/16

September 4, 2016--I am so pleased to report that this project, Rose Swirls, won a second place ribbon in Category 3 for Independent Projects (Non-Professional) at the 2016 American Needlepoint Guild (ANG) Seminar Exhibit in New Orleans, LA.   I feel this venue is the pinnacle of exhibits with the most stringent judging, and winning ANY ribbon is something to be extremely proud of.

All in all, very happy.

Second Place Ribbon Won at ANG 2016 Seminar

March 18, 2015--Won 2nd Place Ribbon in the Canvaswork-Multi category at Woodlawn's 52 Annual Needlework Exhibition in Alexandria, VA.

November 18, 2014--From January through April of this year, 2014, I participated in an ANG pilot stitch program and am finally able to write about this beautiful project.  It's called Rose Swirls and is designed by Carol Algie Higginbotham.  This is the first time I've done anything as a pilot stitcher online and thoroughly enjoyed the process.  Of course, Carol's written instructions and photographs were wonderful and I had very few comments to make to assist Carol in preparing her final classroom instructions.

BTW, this is now an ANG Correspondence Course and can be found at this link.

Rose Swirls Completed

I only made two changes to Carol's instructions.  The first involves the outlining.  Her instructions called for a stem stitch outline which I changed to couching.  I've not had good luck doing stem stitches--the lines are more zig zag in fashion instead of straight or curved.  So I purchased perle 5 in the same colors as the floss being outlined and couched the perle with one strand of matching floss.  It worked great for me.   The picture below shows the raised, couched outline.

Rose Swirls Raised Couched Outline

The second change was to add a trellis darning pattern to the background.  Her instructions didn't call for anything in the background, but I wanted to place the project in a square frame, so needed to do something with all that blank space.  I really like how it came out.

I learned a number of new things doing this project--ribbon embroidery being one of them.   I loved the petite ribbon roses and also used ribbon to make some of the french knots.  Of course, the feather stitches were done in a random fashion which I'm not a big fan of, but they too came out well.  Many of the white pulled work stitches inside the circle were new to me and again, had a lot of fun working them.

The last picture shows how this piece is framed.

Rose Swirls Framed