Wildflower–Ribbon & Stump Work Tutorial–Panel 6 Part 1

I now update you with panel 6 - Hydrangeas & Wisteria.

Part 1.

Materials used, DMC - 209, 210 793 - spare waste cotton fabric. 7mm ribbon - green pepper colour.

Stitches used, French knots, detached chain & running stitch.

The hydrangeas are worked on the spare cotton and attached to the ground fabric, they look really effective if I say so myself.

Taking the spare cotton, I drew 10 circles within circles on to the fabric, mounted it in the hoop and proceeded to fill the inner circle with French knots using DMC 209, 210 and 793, mixing the knots, keeping them small and close together to fill the inner circle. Using a longer last thread once the knots were finished, I used that thread to create a running stitch in the gap between the 2 circles.

These loose tails will be pulled once each circle is cut out to form a ball shape, with the spare fabric tucked behind.

As you can see I used a spare pin to keep the tails out of the way as I worked the circles with French knots.

A closer view

the next stage is to cut the circles out making sure you don't cut the thread tails. Take each Hydrangea, and gentle pull the tail thread until the fabric curls under the back, secure with a couple of stitches but do not cut the tail off as this thread will be used to anchor the Hydrangea to the ground fabric. (saving thread).

Once that is complete you end up with a bunch of hydrangeas ready to place.

Starting with one of the bigger ones (they are different sizes for a more realistic effect, just make the circles bigger smaller), I placed the first Hydrangea at the bottom of the panel on the ground fabric and used the tail thread to anchor it to the ground fabric making small stab stitches between the French knots.

I carried on placing the Hydrangeas leaving space between them for the leaves.

Using the 7mm ribbon I created detached chains between the Hydrangeas, leaving some more puffed than others to create an interesting effect.

And this is the result.

I am really pleased with how this has turned out, even if I say so myself, these little flowers only took an afternoon and I find it quite therapeutic to create French knots which I find so easy to do. The 2nd part of this panel 6 tutorial is to create the wisteria which also uses some interesting stitches.

So until next time - I hope to have another update over the next couple of days.