Flower Bed Cartouche

This colourful little cartouche, filled with flowers and seedbeads can be adapted for yardage, or extended into a bookmark, replacing the seed beads with a 6 pair filling stitch, spider or crossing.

The idea of this piece was to not use white thread.  I mixed colours, makes, materials, and the thickness of the threads.  

The edges used the pin under four (two pair edge) and started by hanging the four pairs around an outer pin, twist one pair twice, cross twist cross and twist twice.  These pairs are now ready to work the passives in either direction.  Lay in the passives by hanging the pairs over a temporary pin just below the starting worker pin.  This edge will be worked in both directions so each pair is laid open, one bobbin going one way, it's partner going the other way.  You can lay different threads next to each other and they will be the same on both sides.  Work the worker pairs a little way and then remove the temporary pin. 

Start the picot circle of the flower, going in one direction, at the right, or left hand petal, not at the top three. Start the picot circle upwards. Hang two picot pairs around a pin, twist once and lay a magic thread in before plaiting to the first single thread picot.  Two picots are used on each outer plait between petals to maintain a curved shape. This leaves enough room to make the tallies, the edge, and to work the tallies after the crossing.  The two picot pairs will finish at this pin, after working through the last exiting tally,  using the magic thread to complete the circle.  The two picot pairs are either tied off and cut, or hidden by whipping them together with the unplaited pairs of a plait, throwing single threads out gradually after each couple of whippings. 

Add the plaited pairs at the inner edge pins, work through the picot circle to start the tally.  Add the variegated pair at this pin, one to work, one to be the center bobbin.  Each tally has two outer threads, one inside thread and one worker.  

The crossing at the center is somewhere we can have fun.  Divide into sets of three bobbins to work an eight pair crossing, this will give a little splash of green at the center of the flower.  Alternatively, make slightly shorter petals, work a half stitch center and make a raised and rolled tally with double threads in the center. 

To make the beaded flowerettes - pin between the two top pairs, add a seed bead to each single pair on each side.  Cloth stitch around the pin through the left and right plaits, add a seed bead to the single pairs on each side.

Flowerette

Work an unpinned roseground stitch with the two plait pairs. Take the plait pairs through the outside edge.  Add seed beads to the single pair.  Alternatively, a spider, a square tally or a simple crossing could be made in the center. 

After the flowerettes have been worked, the extra pairs which were added, just after the tally flower, will need removing by either being tied off, or the threads hidden by whipping them in with the unplaited pairs of a plait and throwing out the extra threads along the length to the next pin. 

Work the edge down where a horizontal tally will start and lay in two pairs with a magic thread around the pin for the picot circle around the tally flower as before.

The two pairs from each of the last four tallies, after they have come out of the picot circle, are taken into the edge.  Cloth stitch with the worker and take one tally pair and work through the passives only, tension and lay aside to cut off later.  Work the worker through the passives and make the stitch with the waiting worker.  Take the remaining tally pair and work through the passives only, tension and lay aside with other tally pair.  Continue with the workers in the usual way.

Thread notes.  I used DMC variegated thread which gives a very gentle change in colour between the palest hue and the main colour.  This gives the tallies a subtle colour variation.  A similar thread, the old Sylco variegated cotton has a shorter but still subtle change of tone which is lovely for tallies.    Gutermann variegatedand other variegated machine quilting threads, by comparison, are much shorter between the hues and tend to have sudden colour changes having big differences between tones and colours within each reel.  This leads to tallies with stripes of contrasting colour.  Hand dyed threads will have their own differences so it is worth checking the graduation of colour along a thread to see what kind of change you will get in your tallies.  

The .pdf is available in the Files tab in

Lesleys Lace facebook group

Tutorial for two versions of the seed bead flowerette on my you tube channel

https://youtu.be/DAvBFwAdeYk

https://youtu.be/6HEan966E5w