Last night was my second class of Wilton Course 2 -- however first night of RI. It was the first time I made it/worked with it. The consistency was fine last night (even more so that the instructor helped me get it to the right consistency).

I had it in a bowl (saran wrap over the icing), lid was on tight. I wanted to practice the Victorian rose -- I figured since these were the ones going on our final cake, I wanted to practice and actually do them in color.

When using the icing, I stirred it with my spatula, did not add any water. The only thing I added was Americolor gel. When I was doing the roses, my RI just seemed runny. Like it wasn't stiff enough, and my petals would not hold shape and would kind of run together.

I'm not sure if I just didn't start off right (like I should have added something to the RI or used the mixer on it) or if the coloring made it too runny.

I used pretty much the last bit of it, so I plan on making a new batch as I'd like to practice the flowers, but if it's the gel color, I don't want to add it and have to throw it out. The other girl in class used the Wilton colors and didn't seem to have any problems at all, so I'm not sure where my issue is. I have both Wilton colors and Americolor and they seem relatively the same, so I can't imagine that it is the color gel, but I could be wrong.

Any suggestions on what could have gone wrong? Could adding more meringue or powdered sugar helped stiffen in this case?

Its not a big deal, all you have to do is add more ri no need to get rid of the batch.

yes..(again) more ps would do. However I felt the need to make a comment...when in my wilton class, everyone's ri kept getting runny after working with it a while (and this was not the same batch, it was our own individual made at home batches) my instructor said when working with ri sometimes the a/c for some reason will put moisture into the ri and it will start to run.

Did you make a dark or bold color?