Cosmo 3 Page 3 Headscratcher

Since I purchased the Cosmo books I couldn't get a particular pattern out of my mind. It was a real conundrum. This week I decided I just couldn't stitch another ball if I hadn't stitched out this design. In the top of the photo you can see a scan if the original picture. It had no instructions at all and wasn't even mentioned in the text.

I had a feeling it was a C10 and the stitching area was on the 6 part triangle. Also I could see that the shape was a mitsubishi stitch. I researched Mitsubishi stitching and discovered that the design is made by stitching and linking square or pentagon shapes. This meant that all the Mitsubishi were connected and this was not the case in the photo so this theory was a dead end. Additionally there was no way to get the points to meet inside the C10 pentagon if I followed this method and stayed with my C10 original thought.

What I didn't know was that when you see a shape in temari it is not always stitched the way you might expect and this can lead you to look for an answer to a much harder problem. I decided that the points were a kiku of sorts because I thought it would be too hard to stitch a triangle and then diamond shapes over the top. It must have been a continuous stitch. I had seen a kiku stitch similar to this that is worked inwards towards a center but it was always stitched into a star shape.

SO that was it I was firmly stuck. So after many weeks of trying to decipher its' secrets with little luck I decided to call on the brains trust at the Temari Challenge and Talk Temari groups. Thankfully the folk were more than happy to help out :)). I was on the right path but with the assistance received I was given the final piece of the puzzle and that was confirmation that what I had guessed was correct and that the stitch path could be adapted from a star shape to a triangle. The stitch used was Sakasa Uwagake Kagari.

I can now say that I have completed this ball and am moving on to my next challenge. Thank you to everyone that helped out on this one. If you are interested in temari and like to join the groups online the links are here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TemariChallenge/ and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/talktemari/.