I really like wearing flowers these days. Actually, I think I've always liked wearing flowers. I wasn't a girly girl the way that Evelyn is, I was more of a fairy girl. I liked elves and magic, and shimmery things - kind of like a raccoon- hording all sorts of little sparklies in my hidey holes. I'm not sure if Evelyn's love for flowers on her head in any form has enhanced my interest in wearing flowers or if I somehow transferred my little girly tendencies in utero. In fact, I bet that's what happened, isn't everything amplified in utero? So every time I thought "ohh, pretty flower" her brain was blasted with "FLOWERS! FLOWERS!" which, you know, explains a lot about the kid (One of her consequences, by the way, for misbehaving, is that she isn't allowed to wear pink the next day. Tells ya something, huh!)But back to my flower obsession. I've made a couple of different fabric flowers over the past year. Last Mother's Day I made this one for myself,
This winter this one came out of my felted sweater craze.
As did this, which went straight to Evelyn without a stop at my room.
And last month I revamped the first one with this which I kinda love for it's art-decoish ness.
And while I love them all and wear them regularly, along with some silk flowers that I have turned into pins which Evie and I fight over, really the fabric flower I want is one of these.
I know, who doesn't love Emerson's Flowers. They are amazing. But yeah, expensive. When I took the kids to the fabric store the other week to pick out tie/dress fabric (see how good I was working on their projects first!) I came across some blue linen that just, I don't know, needed to be a flowers.
So I've been puttering with it. I'll never be able to match the gorgeousness of EmersonMade, but it still turned out to be a pretty little thing. In fact, it was so pretty I made two and gave one to a friend.
Evelyn is already eyeing it. She keeps telling me "My flower is very pretty" which is code for "Mom, that will look better on me than you." I guess I'll have to make one for her as well (oh darn!) but, inevitably, in pink. Or maybe we'll get really wild and go with red. Nah, who am I kidding, it'll have to be pink.
Before I started cutting and sewing I heavily starched the whole piece of fabric with spray starch. I wish I had heavy duty starch because it could have been a little stiffer, but the regular worked pretty well.
Using a jar I traced a bunch of circles onto the fabric. When I cut them out, however, I added a point to the circles so they looked more petal like. I think I might try to make an indentation at the top of the petal next time for a more Peony like petal, we'll see.
I stitched a little tuck into every petal, most of them just got a small tuck but I also made several for the center with a deeper tuck so that they stood up and curled in more. I'd like to say that I used red thread so you could see the stitches, that would sound all smart and as if I had any forethought here. But I was just out of blue thread. I used to have so much thread in so many colors that I got out of the habit of ever buying any when I went to the fabric store. And now I'm down to red, navy blue (which, come to think of it, probably would have been a more logical choice here) and black. Time to re-stock I guess.
Once all the petals had tucks I started layering them around and around till I got to the center. It takes a lot of petals to get a good thick flower. I used up a 1/4 yard of 60 inch linen on just the two flowers (probably why Emerson's are so expensive) and it is time consuming, but in a meditative, sit under the tree and make a flower kind of way.
Tonight is the mother-son dance so I'll get a chance to spruce up and wear it out. It will go well with the pirate tie I think. Because everything goes well with a pirate tie.