You can tell when you really love something...

Sorry part two of flowers will have to wait... my headpiece arrived!!


I LOVE IT.

...You can probably tell from the big grin on my face ;)

(excuse shiny bad flash photo..)

Making flowers.. part one.. an adventure

So I'm planing on making some fabric flowers. Some for my dress, maybe stuff for other miscellany if they work.

There are loads and loads of tutorials on the net for this. After much reading, they all seem to bow down to this.

1. Cut out a basic flower shape from lots of fabric. 
2. Then, either:  
1. fold them into quarters and sew them together or,
2. sew them together in a stack
3. At this point you can :
1. Leave them as they are
2. Stack them with more to make it bigger
3. (If they are synthetic) burn the edges carefully until they curl.
4. Add a bead or diamante or pin to the centre to hide the stitching

Pretty much all of them come down to variants of this technique, and all those fabric flowers I've picked up largely use this as well (unless they are the 'real'  fake flowers, not fabric ones.)

So... I have a stack of fabric in a mix of colours (greys/whites/ pale green) and fabrics (synthetic and silk, chiffon and satin and duponi) bought on sale at Textile Traders. (yay for half price sales).

Step one. Iron them all. I didn't bother washing them because they should shrink cos they aren't getting washed later ;)

Step two... admire the pile of fabric.

Step three pick one and start cutting out the flowers. I'm using the basic Martha Stewart template because I am a detail oriented idiot on some things and the idea of a generic "flower" I draw freehand makes me uncomfortable. And the green chiffon because I got extra of that because there was a flaw, so the lady gave me extra for free :)

Stack them unevenly.

Decide there isn't enough and cut out another stack.

Pin through the stack.

Thread a needle and sew a little fold in one direction, then mush it and sew it the other way.

Turn over and marvel that these things cost so damn much in the shops.

Wedding shawl blocked and done.

Sooo glad I did 3 repeats of the centre and not 5!

I finished it!!

My shawl is done. I need to block it though and sadly it's too late now to do so :(

Can't go to sleep on a wet bed full of pins. Tomorrow night, however... :)

Pre-blocked sneak preview...

My daughter's clever...

Just remembered something worth sharing. We were discussing with a friend how we knew that not everyone will likely be able to come to our wedding, since its a destination wedding and therefore costs etc. and that we completed understood, etc.

She looks up from her game and comments, "Or maybe everyone will just come because they love you."

And goes back to her game.

I love my kid. :)

A little heart (unfelted)

Just before getting dumped into the washing machine with some towels. It's about 6cm across the widest part right now.

Things are ordered...

The Lady of Awesome's dress.
The Flowergirl of Cute's dress.
And my headpiece...

I love it. Very casual and bohemian and pretty.


Now if only those fabric samples would arrive!