Today we sew Fuchsias to the Gossamer Wrap!

If you have been working in Silk Cloud, you have noticed how delicate your Fuchsia are.  I hope you have wired the petals as I suggested you do last week. If you have done this, you will see that the blossoms seem more sturdy, they keep their shape, but they are also squashable – a good thing if you get into the car and lean back on a fuchsia that is dangling so fabulously down your back. Wouldn’t want to be jabbed in a most uncomfortable way by a petal as you speed toward the opera!

What follows is a brief, illustrated guide to the process of embellishing your wrap.

1. Lay your wrap out on a large clean surface.

2. Gather your supplies: regular “sewing” or silk pins, scissors, sharp (rather slender) darning needle).

3. You have a choice to make. You can sew your Fuchsias to the wrap with a strand of Silk Cloud (or your wrap yarn) or sew them on with sewing thread.

Either is a perfectly respectable choice. I chose Silk Cloud in the color of the wrap. I made this choice because I didn’t want the stitches that hold the flower to the wrap to be visible. It might seem logical to use the fuchsia stem color. . . but then those tiny green stitches might show. I left my yarn live from the bind off (see the first photo above) and used it to sew the first Fuchsia on the wrap corner.

3. Using the sewing pins, secure your flower stems in place, then perfect the arrangement, before setting to work on one Fuchsia.

4. With the wrap still on the table, sew the flowers on one-at-a-time until all are secured, removing pins as you go.

But how do we hide the wrap color stitches on the Fuchsia itself? I used the stems like a little subway for the needle and thread: I traveled with the needle through the stem until I reached the destination for a stitch, momentarily emerged to catch just a thread of the wrap before traveling again through the stem subway to the next stop. Securing stitches were made–that is, the finishing off knots and such–in the wrap fabric toward the bottom of the wrap so as to be least visible and then the tail was woven back into the stem of the Fuchsia.

5. Check to make sure that your stitches are invisible on the back side. . . If they are not, consider re-doing.

LA! It’s ready to wear. I can’t wait to see your pictures!

Please post pictures of your finished or in-process wrap in your Ravelry project pages and link to the Gossamer Fuchsia Wrap KAL.

If you are posting your finished/in-process wrap on your Facebook page, please tag Noni Designs.