Wrapt Up in Ribbons

I have an on-going fascination with creating ribbon patterns. I was first smitten with stitched ribbons when I worked on a Carol Costello piece 'way back in the '80s, called HAPSBURG LACE. ..I LOVED working on that canvaswork piece of interwoven ribbons. It's still one of my all-time favorite pieces.

And I've always wanted to create my own design of interwoven ribbons. But where do you even begin? Over the last few years, I started by adding a few bits of ribbons in my floral collage pieces. It was so much fun to mix & match stitches and threads to create pieces of ribbon, that I finally had the confidence to sit down and design my first interwoven ribbon pattern called FLORAL RIBBONS.


I've always wanted to stitch something in apricot and green as well....because my sister Diane stitched her own design of woven ribbons back in the '80s, using that color combination, and it always stuck in my mind as a very lovely color pairing.


Anyway, here's a closeup of some of the floral ribbons:
I just love looking at their supposed complexity, but really, they're made up of very simple stitches - just combined in fun ways - to look more complex than they really are.

And, as usual, I love to incorporate a variegated pearl cotton thread....using it as the foundation of the color palette, and then choosing my colors from that variegated thread.


Here are more floral ribbons from FLORAL RIBBONS.
You can see how the variegated thread is used in a bargello-type ribbon that really adds drama to the overall piece.

And above it, inside the apricot zig-zag ribbon, you can see the variegated thread is used to create the large smyrna star flowers...Yet another way to use variegated thread!

Yum....these ribbons are almost as delicious as a box of chocolates (but not nearly as fattening!)