Process

Creating the design for the blackberry bramble border is a bit of a convoluted process. I went back to working half size as it's not so unwieldy. When I photocopy the final design I will enlarge it by 200% so that it will should be the right size for the embroidered bears. Inevitably there will be a bit of tweaking.

Anyway, I decided to make my border more of an arch than a rectangle, so while the bottom part has roots, the top will curve up with berry-laden vines. And it's also not quite symmetrical, because the bears are slightly different shapes. But I think that makes the design more dynamic and interesting.

I eliminated about a third of the vines and leaves in my tracing so the whole tangle wouldn't be so overwhelming. They are still very sinuous and thorny. Even though it might seem like a lot of time with the pencil, doing repeated tracings really helps perfect the design. What you see above is the tracing overlaid upon the original photocopy, so it's a bit hard to see what has been eliminated, but I will hopefully get it transferred to the cloth in the next couple of days and will have a clearer picture for you.