Finishing the Smocked Heart

 The front of the Smocked Heart, with a gathered ribbon rose sewn in place.

I found in my stash some hand dyed 7 mm silk ribbon by Bucilla, "Baby Pinks" No. 7113. I have no idea where I bought it, but the pink matched the silk fabric beautifully. If you look closely, you can see the gathering threads that I stitched with sewing thread along one edge of the ribbon, knotting one end and leaving the other dangling. I took the ribbon with the knotted edge to the back of some scrap fabric in a hoop.

Then pulled on the thread to gather the ribbon, forming it into a circle and stitching the long end down to secure it.

Here's the gathered ribbon rose, still on the fabric in the hoop. I then cut out the fabric about an inch around the rose, gathered it over a button, and sewed it to the heart as shown in the first photo. I even added some gold beads for the stamens.

Now for a bit more embroidery. I made three rolled ribbon rosebuds and stitched them so they peeked out from the center rose. Then with some 4 mm white silk ribbon, I stitched a few buds around the outside of the center rose.  Oh, there's a pink bud at the bottom. It matches the silk so exactly it's hard to see.

I'm not that practiced in silk ribbon embroidery, so I made quite a few of these on a piece of scrap silk before I was comfortable enough to work them on the heart. Even so, I had to pick a few of them out.  This is a bullion knot-detached chain combination, which I used from the A-Z of Ribbon Embroidery by Country Bumpkin Publications. The directions in the magazine said to make a double colonial knot, but I couldn't figure it out for the life of me, so off I went to the A-Z book. That series is a gold mine! I noticed that I crushed the center rose quite a bit while working the little buds, but found that in the end, a light spritzing of water revives the ribbons beautifully.

Here it is, all finished! I added a 5 inch beaded loop to the top. Now what I should have done is added some dried lavender to the pillow, but of course I thought of that at the end when it was too late. So this is just a pretty little decoration that I'll hang on a china cabinet somewhere.

This technique of placing a lattice smocked piece around a pillow is interesting. I can certainly see it made up much larger in a darker color as a circular end pillow.

No more hearts for a while. Promise.