Temari: Luna of the Roses

Last year when I reread all of Seanan McGuire’s October Daye urban fantasy series, I was also thinking about temari a lot, because I had just finished up my Level 1 & 2 JTA submissions and was starting to think about collecting inspiration for Level 3 designs, which have to be all original patterns. One of the first things I wrote down on my list of possible temari themes was “Luna Torquill rose garden.”

Now, if you read these books, you would know that there are many things that phrase could mean, as Duchess Luna Torquill grows roses of all kinds. Her Garden of Glass Roses is described beautifully in several of the books, and I do still want to do a temari of stained glass roses based on that. But in this case, I was inspired by the passage where Luna’s true appearance is revealed for the first time in An Artificial Night (pg. 197):

The rose began gleaming like a star, getting brighter and brighter until everything was obscured save for Luna and the rose. There was a flash of black and silver light, burning pink around the edges like a sunset, and Luna was gone, replaced by someone I didn’t know.

She was taller than Luna, with marble white skin and hair that darkened from pale pink at the roots to red-black at the tips. It fell past her knees, tangling in the rope of briars that belted her grass green gown. […]

The rose woman opened her eyes. They were pale yellow, like pollen. […]

I had an idea for this sitting in my head for ages, and when I decided to teach a temari class focusing on the rose garden design in March and April, I finally started it so I would have a ball to use as my example. Since I was teaching the class, though, I didn’t get very far into the design, only finishing one full rose to serve as my example for students, and I needed to be working on the temari for my brother’s wedding anyway, so it sat for more than a month, only 1/6 finished, amongst my teaching supplies.

But then, last week, Seanan McGuire posted a giveaway challenge on her blog, asking people to submit art that they had created based on the Toby universe, for a chance to win a advance copy of The Chimes at Midnight, the next book in the series. This was a clear sign I needed to finish it up! Here’s how it turned out:

Rose face

Pictured with an actual rose from our front yard, from the semi-wild rose canes that have been here since we moved in.

Triwing view

The roses I did in the graded pink shades described for Luna’s hair, with the palest pink used for the base. The triwings I did in shades of grass green. I was originally thinking of stopping there, but I also wanted to incorporate thorns somehow, as Luna’s roses are always inclined to demand a price, and her character is hardly uncomplicated. Since there was quite a bit of open space between the roses and triwings, I looked through my embroidery encyclopedia and found the spine chain stitch to make a circle of thorns around each rose. (There is actually a thorn stitch as well, but it didn’t have quite the look I wanted.)

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with it. I might try another variation of the design later on a white base, maybe try to replace those basic triwings with a more intricate winding of thorns now that I have the stitch down, but I definitely consider this a successful prototype.