fun with Lolly

If you guys haven't discovered Lollychops yet, you are so missing out!

This week, she's doing Wall Flowers Week, an entire week of crafty tutorials involving fiber flowers. I am super busy with work and all, and I still couldn't help myself, I sat right down and made flowers the last two nights.

This is the first:Made with strips of fabric folded over, gathered up, and sewn on a small felt circle on the back, just to give it stability. She's got a different color each day, and Monday was orange, which I love. I have tons of orange fabrics, but was getting frustrated looking for that "just right" print. In desperation, I pulled open a drawer of "scraps" and found these two right next to each other. Even better, parts of them were in strips already. Which I cut into 2 1/2" lengths, never mind what the width was. Ended up with half the number of mustard gingham to peachy print, and just went with it. I LOVE it!

This next one, you start with circles of your fabric, cut those in half, sew into cones, and gather up along the wide end. Put 9 of them together and you have a flower. I used a canning ring to draw my circles. That's jumbo ric-rac on top of the fabric cones, then a felt flower, topped with a green button. I had to mess with that ric-rac a lot before I got it to do this, so this one had to rest overnight while I pondered how to make it work. If anyone is interested, I can show you what I did. Even though that's black, with an orange print, I don't feel a "Halloween" vibe from this. It just looks good to me.I only did one of the Tuesday flowers: Her Tuesday color was Teal (her fav), but I didn't have wired ribbon in teal. Mostly, I have printed ribbons, not many solids at all. I'm pretty sure this would still look good in a print, but I wanted solid for my first try. Could not have been easier, seriously. You take a yard or so of wired ribbon, pull up one of the wires to gather that edge, and roll it up, sewing together as you go. I then sorta squished it to make it not so tall.

Here is the whole group:

Sorry that's so dark in the photo. It was late. Not because it took forever to make these. Not at all. Just that I work late this time of year, so anything at home is either first thing in the morning, or just before bed.

Lolly is putting hers in frames, with cute paper behind them and all the stems and leaves and such going on. I'll probably make mine into brooches, dress up my boring work attire. Except, today, she's got these brilliant pom pom flowers, and those totally cry out for framing.

Go check it out. You'll be glad you did, promise!