Many people have asked me if my doily designs could be stitched on water soluble stabilizer to make free standing lace. I never managed to make it work before this one. I've been crocheting a flower similar to this for years. I use it as the center of many different Irish Lace mat patterns. I hope that one day it will be part of a full sized pineapple doily, but it may take more study before I figure out how to make segments that will fit together to make the rest of the doily. Meanwhile, we can play with these pieces. I have 14 rosettes stitched out now. Since they are basically a hexagon shape, they will fit together like tiles.

 The two piece rosette is intended to be stitched on heavy water soluble stabilizer (such as Badge Master) or several layers of lighter soluble stabilizer pressed together between layers of cloth using a warm, dry, iron. I like it stitched in cotton thread. The inner rose can be stitched onto the large one very simply with a few hand stitches, or you can use the button sewing feature on your embroidery machine. If you make five or six band segments and stitch them together at the ends, the rose can be hung from the band and worn as a necklace. The rose will form a cup shape if you stitch it in heavy thread, such as Mettler silk finish cotton 50/3, or another machine quilting thread. It lies flat when stitched with DMC 50 weight (single strand) embroidery cotton. I was not happy with the results when I used rayon thread. Please let me know what you think of them. Alfie McCoskey