The Rose WOW 16th Sept

Hi Everyone, I have well and truly been side tracked from LE this week as bringing home Adrienne Walker's pattern for "The Rose" sent me off on a tangent, another wall hanging I just have to make. How often does this happen to you?
I had enough left over fabric from my Poppies wallhanging to make the rose and assemble it  onto baking paper. As this will probably also hang in the lounge a continuity of colour makes sense.

A little bland at this stage but it's all there.

Next step, fuse my rose to a lightweight stabiliser and do the internal applique stitching.

This is a technique I learnt several years ago through a course with Mary Transom and Adrienne Walker uses a similar tchnique in some of her patterns

Petal definition now taking place but I have had to double stitch much of this.

Initially I matched my threads to the fabric - NOTHING happened!!!

My dark turnbacks and deeper petals looked good but there was just a blur in the mid tones.

Restitching with darker thread all my petals stood out but my light turnbacks still disappeared. 

They are two different fabrics but are just too close in colour.
I didn't want to start again so my favourite metallic gold thread made all the difference to my light turnback petals and my rose is starting to bloom.

Now to decide what other stitching I need before appliquing to my yet unknown background fabric

Finally decided to only stitch the middle leaves.

Hopefully this will help add depth when it is finished.

Next to trim away the stabiliser and add padding.

I used my rose as the pattern and outlined around it onto H640 fusible vilene then

cut out my rose a quarter inch inside my line.

 Still a little extra trimming to do before fusing to my rose.

I had been thinking about my background fabrics since I started knowing I had extra of my LE background fabric that I love but wasn't sure if it would work for the light panels.

Searching Country Dawn's extensive website I found some dark fabrics similar to the pattern fabric but  they were totally different to how they looked on the computer screen.
A wonderful assistant (can't remember her name)  said  "give me a minute I think what you want is out the back" Came back with the perfect fabric, not the slightest bit like I was thinking of'that time,
they were holding it aside for a kit they are releasing shortly but a meter was quickly mine.

Does this happen to you as well? You just know it when you see it!!!

So "The Rose" has now reached this stage.

The background fabric is actually a very very dark brown not black.

The rose is stitched only around the outer edges, I will do further stitching once the batting is added and at this stage the stem and leaves are only fused into place..

The same assistant also found the perfect leaf fabric for me from their range of landscape fabrics and although my DH quite rightly says any knowledgeable rose grower would say " Please treat your rose for leaf blight" he also agrees the light and dark contrast is perfect for this wall hanging.

 It came from fussy cutting this fabric.

The fact it has a leafy texture throughout and so many shades of green to pick from make it a WOW fabric. Now to do the vein stitching on my leaves before I fuse the top to another layer of Vilene H640 which is my batting choice for wallhangings. 

Hope you are enjoying your Wedbesday everyone.

Cheers Jenny