Black/rainbow rose doily starch question

[RioSeline]

I have a large black doily. I will be sewing 22 various colored roses of the shade of the rainbow, along with their stems and leaves, onto it. I assume I should starch and block it first, and then sew the roses and stems on. I think I should use a heavy starch, so that when I do as much sewing as I'm going to have to do, it should remain stiff. These are my ideas I hope someone can give me some pointers and help. Images to come later if I get a response to this 😊

[Granny Square]

I mostly make doilies nowadays, so do a lot of doily blocking.  I've got a tall pile of doilies in my closet, not sure how many but quite a few!

I have never once use heavy starch, only the spray starch that is meant to use while ironing clothing.  What I do is wet the doily, squeeze it out, put it in the bottom of my sink (I have a double sink with a roomy wider side that works well for this), spray it liberally with the starch, and squeeze it again.

If there are embellishments like roses or leaves, I attach them before doing all of the above, so the embellishments get squeezed too.

I have a 'presentation board' that I got at the craft store, it has a stiff foam core  thick paper on each side, that I use for pinning out.  I've made several polar graphs with various angles so I can pin (mostly round) doilies with different numbers of divisions; the one I use the most is the one that I dual purposed for 8 and 12 points (which can be eyeballed to other numbers that relate to them, like 6 or 16).  I put the polar graph on the presentation board, put plastic wrap over it, and pin out the doily with rust proof pins (don't skip the rust proof pins, regular pins WILL rust and ruin your work, I learned this the hard way).  If I rumpled roses during this process, I 'make them look pretty' just poking at them with my fingers.  

No heavy starch, they are 'limp-ish' not at all stiff, but they keep their shape.  The attached photo of a doily I made a while back is probably an extreme example, it had a LOT of fussy leaves to pin out, but the doily is not at all stiffly starched, and the elements stay in their place.  I don't think I had to do anything to the roses while blocking.  But if you poke at a leaf, it 'moves', and if you pick up the doily it flops around, it is not stiff.  (sorry it is so big)

Edited September 12, 2022 by Granny Square

[Granny Square]

Pattern is here if you are interested.  This is a DRG site, associated with Crochet World, Crochet! magazines, and Annie's Attic patterns.  It's free, you need to 'sign up', but they don't spam you.  (the only changes I made to this pattern aside from colorizing it, is using only the branch tips not the whole branch around the edge, and a slightly modified rose, just to suit my whim, plus I was a little tired of making leaves by end...