1. Buy your fabric. I chose a variety of textures: dupioni silk in two colours, a chiffon and a gauze material, but yours can be different. You will need about 10cm of each one.
2. Cut out petal shapes. You will need 3-4 of each colour if you use 4 colours, so 12-16 petals in total. Cut each petal individually, as this creates a lack of uniformity that helps to create a more beautiful flower.
3. Coat the edge of each petal with non-fray glue, which can be bought in any craft shop. This is a crucial step, otherwise your material will fray, making for shabby flowers.
(optional step: if you want to achieve a tonal hue on your petals, brush some water onto them, then dilute some watercolour paint and dab on. This will spread, resulting in a lovely natural effect).
4. Get safety pins and attach the petals to each other to suit your taste. Think of folding the petals slightly or pinching the base when attaching them to achieve some texture. Secure together with safety pints.
5. With a needle and thread, sew the petals together. Gradually remove the safety pins.
6. Sew beads/buttons of your choice to the centre of the flower.
7. Cut out a circle of fabric and using fabric glue, attach to stiff lining/another stiff material. Attach a safety pin and using the same fabric glue, attach the circle (lining down) to the base of the flower to hide the base's bare threads.
8. (optional) scrunch the whole flower in your hand slightly to create texture.
Et voila!
As I stated before, this is not an 'official' method. There may be better ways, and if you know of any I would love to hear your suggestions. I do, however, think that this is a method anyone could use, so I encourage you to give it a try to spruce up an outfit. It's also a great way to use up your scraps of material and, best of all, it's so inexpensive yet pretty!
1 comments:
Beautiful. As a flower addict,this is a very useful how-to!
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