In this week’s WIP Wednesday update, I finally dove in and stitched the ribbon embroidery design that I choose onto the two sides of my future pinch purse.

I choose a little motif from the pattern book I showed in my last post. The finished pinch purse will not be very large, so I needed a small pattern, but I also wanted something that used several kinds of stitches so the piece would have some visual interest, too.

The design I choose uses the spider web stitch to create two little roses and a lazy daisy stitch to create leaves on either side of the roses. The design also uses French knots and a twisted straight stitch.

Here is my start on the first side of the purse:

My stitches are not perfect by any means, but I am not going to get hung up on perfection for this little project. I’m just trying out ribbon embroidery for the first time and having a little fun with it.

Because I had bought five different colors of ribbon, I decided to stitch the roses on the other side of the purse using the blue ribbon so I could use all five colors at least a little bit.

Here is the completed second side:

You can see that it is a very simple little motif, but I love that uses five different stitches, so I got to try out different techniques with the ribbon. The twisted straight stitches (the brown ribbon) were the most difficult. I had a hard time getting the tension right, so those stitches are somewhat messy.

The roses were the most fun to stitch. I love the spider web stitch. I pulled out my DMC color card and found DMC thread to match the ribbons I had. Then I used one strand of embroidery thread to stitch the spokes of the “web” and then wove the ribbon under and over the spokes. (Mary Corbett has a great tutorial video on the spider web stitch here.) Because the roses are so small, I only used three spokes to weave the stitch.

Here are both halves of the purse together (just off the hoop!):

Next I will be cutting the fabric and then it’s time to begin the assembly! I’m happy that I might actually finish this project before my guild’s September meeting, which is when the challenge projects are due. Wish me luck!