Folded Fabric Flowers

I've gone from struggling to find new ideas for things to make and sell to now having too many!!

I'm finding it all too easy to be distracted from doing some 'real' work ( pieces for exhibitions) and am prevaricating by making lots of little things for the forthcoming craft fair season. I'm trying to find time to set up the shop on my website too - that's how I'm currently justifying spending so much time folding squares of fabric into flowers!! More time needed with the laptop and less time with the fabric I think.

Anyway . . . . . . . . .I started making flowers like these;

I found the pattern in a library book. Fold a square of fabric into quarters then do a line of running stitch along the raw edges. Pull the thread tight and secure with a few stitches before  attaching the petals to each other. Glue a button in the centre and a circle of felt to the back to hide the raw edges.

All that seemed simple enough but I found it really hard going trying to get the needle through several layers of fabric.

I don't remember how I found the instructions for Kanzashi flowers - maybe I was looking up different ways of folding the petals - but I soon found loads of websites and video tutorials about Kanzashi.

The method is much the same in that the fabric starts off being folded into quarters (although not always!) then there are a variety of different folds to give different petal shapes.

In some cases the petals can be used either way up. The photo above shows the front of the 2 smaller flowers and the back of the larger one. Combinations of different petals shapes means there are endless combinations. I started out making larger flowers but have discovered that smaller ones are better.

This one is about 4cm across and the little ones will be used for putting onto hair clips.

 

I soon discovered from video clips on YouTube that using spray starch on the fabric then ironing them works best.

These are unfinished;

I wanted to use my collection of vintage buttons but most of them are too big, chunky and too dark in colour. The red one further up has a cream coloured vintage button on it but they don't look good on the smaller ones.

Once the petals are folded you secure them with a pin until ready to complete the flower. Run a strong thread through each petal, pull tight then tie a surgeons knot twice to hold the thread tight.

I've been amazed that they look so good so quickly. Usually, you do something new and it starts out a bit raggedy and gets better. Once I starched the fabric even the earliest ones looked good - very surprising.

I found this to be the best tutorial;

My next trick is to work out how much to charge for them.

Any suggestions?

More fabric coil pots

I took to doing one of these coil pots by hand because I was really fed up with not being able to get the aperture size I wanted when doing them on the machine.





It's hard to get them narrower than this on the machine.



So this is what I did by hand

I discovered a book called 'Sewing Pottery by Machine' by Barbara Warholic when I was in a quilting shop recently. I freely confess to standing there and reading various bits in the book for quite some while. I mean quite a loooong time!  I didn't want to buy the book 'cos there were only about 4 pages in it that I actually need.

I discovered that it was possible to make the pots in several sections to get the size and shape you want. (Why didn't I think of that?!)

This is the base and bottom half.



The way to make the openings the size you want is with the use of starter coils. You make the coils the size of the opening you want . . . . . . .

You start this part by winding your cord wrapped with fabric . . .



And wind it round the size of starter coil you need - like this . . . .

I don't know how you're supposed to do it but I found it easiest to hold the first round of cord in place with pins. You start machine stitching with a medium zigzag stitch where the cord overlaps itself.

Continue machine stitching in the usual way until the second half is the size and shape that you want. It is possible to make it in more than 2 pieces but I decided not to be too adventurous on the first attempt!

Then you just unpin the starter coil and pop it out . . . . 

The last job is to stitch the two halves together. I haven't done that yet but here the two halves are sitting in place.

I'm going to attempt a lid for the top of the pot so will post it up if is successful (I'm not owning up to it if it isn't - what'm I? Stupid?????!!!)

The Lady from America she say YES!!!

Apologies if you're not old enough to remember the old del Monte advert that inspired my post title today.

Anyway, Erin Erickson who made the pattern and tutorial for the circle purse I made has said that I can go ahead and start making more of them! She will put a licensed version of the pattern on her blog (Dog Under My Desk) and when it is up I can pay for it and go ahead and sell the ones I make. Yippeee!!!

She seemed grateful that I'd bothered to ask permission as anyone selling them on Etsy at the moment doesn't have permission to do so! As Erin says, it takes an awful lot of time to follow up everyone who's ripped off your work!

It really does drive me nuts when people rip of what we do as artists. It's hard enough to make any money from Art in a recession without someone else benefitting from your hard work.

Stepping down off my soapbox now . . . . .