Stitch Sunday Inspiration: Woven Roses

Everyone commented how my woven buttonhole wheels look like roses. Of course, that is a classic use of woven wheels done in Ribbon. Sorry to the ribbon embroidery fans if my work on this looks amateurish, I have never really learnt propper ribbon embroidery.

So I got a spool of organza ribbon, this was the only ribbon like thing and the only colour form the red family I could get without undertaking a trip across town (for which I had no time) so I went ahead with it.

First, I drew a little rambler rose twig and transferred it onto my current sampler using a fine liner. Then I stitched a buttonhole wheel. Roses are supposed to have 5 groups of petals, but I did the circles too big so I stitched 7 spokes. No one except the nature freaks are going to notice. Then I came up with the organza band in the middle and started weaving round and round.

The weaving was hard going because the buttonhole wheel lost stability from tugging on it. I kept tugging on the spokes after every stitch to keep them from wrapping around the organza. Later on the buttonloe wheel was pushed back into shape by the mass of organza band. In the last row, I wove very loosely to form the outer rose petals, then I sunk the organza band to the back.

The finished flower is a bit disordered because of the instable buttonhole stitches but charming. I fixed the outer petals with a few stitches in sewing thread which has the colour of the background.

For comparison, I did two other variants. The upper one with straight stitches emerging from the middle of the circle as spokes is (I believe) the traditional way to weave a ribbon rose. for the second one, I made a spider wheel as base. two spokes need to close to each other because you have to treat them as one to end up with an uneven number of spokes.

the straight stitch wheel was easy to weave, you have to find the right tension that creates neatly folded petals and that’s it.
The next picture shows how the spider wheel is woven. This again, is somewhat hard because it is not fixed in the middle.

No here are the finished roses. the spider wheel rose (lower, right)was imho no a sucess, the other two are charming, each in their own way.

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Stitch Sunday 2 – Woven Buttonhole Wheel

Along comes Stitch Sunday, the second installment: Woven buttonhole wheel.

As a first step, do an ordinary buttonhole wheel, for example as described last week. It is important that the wheel has an uneven number of spokes.

Next, use the same or a different yarn. Here I have been using a more lightweight yarn in a contrasting colour.

Now weave around the wheel, always one over, one under.

Now behold the finished woven buttonhole wheel. It is similar to a woven spider wheel, only with a little rim in the colour of the buttonhole wheel.
The last picture shows another woven buttonhole wheel, done with a thick, soft cotton thread.