Back to the Mission Rose embroidery project here! The rose is coming along….

Last time we visited the Mission Rose, the outer petals in the dark reds, worked in long and short stitch, were finished. Today, we’re looking at the inner petals on the rose.

These five inner petals are worked with the two pinks in the color scheme for the rose, and then touched in with some dark red.

So I began the inner petals by split stitching the outline of the petals in the lighter of the two pinks (Soie de Paris 2641). I worked the split stitch just inside the edge of the red.

The little dots of thread inside the petal areas are the starts and stops of my embroidery threads. I use a waste knot on the front of the piece, in an area that will be covered with embroidery, and then take several tiny anchor stitches and cut off the waste knot.

This is a really good way to start and end threads on this type of embroidery, as long as you can do it an area that will be covered. It keeps you from having to flip your frame each time you need to start or end a thread.

Using a pencil, I marked in guidelines for the layers of shading in semi-circles and the guidelines for stitch direction radiating from the center of the flower. The space is so small that guidelines aren’t necessarily required, but they do help if you have trouble keeping the direction of the stitches, or judging how long your long and short stitches should be.

The first layer of long and short stitches is quite long, taking up about two-thirds of the petal area. The stitches begin by bringing the needle up inside the petal area, and they end by taking the needle and thread down over the split stitch line.

Here’s the completed first layer of pinks. They look a little wonky on the left side, but this is mostly due to the reflection of the light on the silk threads and the angle of the photo. Or maybe I just stitched them wonky! I’m pretty sure I followed the stitch direction (more or less!).

The nice thing about long and short stitch is that it is a forgiving stitch!

Here’s the second layer of pink going in. This is the medium pink in the color line up, Soie de Paris 2914.

As it turns out, I’m not using the ivory Soie de Paris on the rose. Initially, I planned on the first layer of these inner petals being ivory, but there really isn’t room to work four layers of color in here, so I stuck with the pinks and skipped the ivory.

Notice that this medium pink is taken all the way down to the outline of the middle circle of the rose.

And finally, after finishing the medium pink, I took the dark red used in the outer petals (Soie de Paris 4624) and cut in just a few tiny “sketchy” dark stitches, to finish the petals. I wanted some darker contrast in the center there, right next to the middle of the rose, because I plan for the center of the rose to be worked in gold. The gold will stand out better with the darker stitches in contrast around the outer edge.

Plus, I just like that third layer of dark in there – it gives the pink petals a little more life!

And here’s the Mission Rose so far, stepping back a little.

Next up in the order of work are the outer “turn-over” petals on the rose. The last rose I worked (this Tudor Rose in silk and gold), the outer petals were worked in gold threads. But on this rose, I want to work those turn-overs in silk.

Each layer of the rose will have a tiny gold thread between it and its neighboring layers.

We’ll be adding the gold after all the silk embroidery is finished, though (except for some tiny touches in darker outlines), so it will be a little while before we get to that point!

I’m regretting changing that rose bud style at the top of the design. Rrrrrgh. I have tested a few “overlays” with tracing paper, to see if I could change the design there without messing everything up, but it’s a difficult proposition. I’ve even considered changing that to a larger leaf. We’ll see if anything comes of these trials – no guarantees…

Questions, comments, suggestions? Feel free to have your say below!

If you’d like to read the backstory on the Mission Rose project and follow it along step-by-step as it develops, please visit the Mission Rose Project Index, where you’ll find all the articles relating to this project listed in chronological order.