Sunday, July 14, 2013

Tutorial on wrapping a fabric flower bouquet


Tutorial Time!!

How to wrap a fabric flower stem bouquet.

 

Once you’ve done these two steps, you are ready to start wrapping your stems into a bouquet!

Make sure you’ve made tons of flowers. If you’re doing a brides size bouquet, I would suggest roughly 25-35 flowers . You can make the same type of flower or a variety to mix, but if you do a mix, make sure you have different sizes to play with.
Here is a quick tutorial on how to make 2 different rose flowers using the same technique for both.

You will begin by taking 2 bunches of the same flowers to come up with the size of the bouquet. I usually use 3 or 4 flowers per bunch.


 

Gather the bunch and wrap together. Do the same with the second bunch.


Then wrap the 2 bunches together.

 
                               
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Next, you will want to separate them to make a circle. You want to push them low enough so that from a side view, you don’t see the wires. If you don’t push them down low enough, when you get to the part of making the skirt, it will look like a ball placed on a stick, and not a half ball placed on a stick which is what you want.  (You can see on the left, one stem is a little longer, I later fixed that by bending the stem to make it shorter. )

 

Once you’ve decided on the shape, you will decide on the height of your bouquet. I like to use a larger flower. A nice one that you like the most. It’s the flower that is shown off the most and it’s the highest, so you want to make sure it’s the perfect one. Decide on how high and tape it into place. When deciding the height, you need to take into consideration that you want to keep the bouquet rounder, and not make it like a pyramid .
 

Now, you will pick 2-3 bunches of how ever many types you have made. I made 7 different flowers, so 2-3 stems of the 7 flowers.



You’ll go from the largest flowers to the smaller ones. Keeping in mind that the large flowers are going to add fullness, and the smaller flowers will fill the small holes.

Start by placing one flower on one side, then placing another flower of the same group on the other side. And wrap. Making sure you try and balance the same flowers in the bouquet.




I try to only wrap 2-3 flowers at a time. You want to create thickness in your handle, so don’t be shy to tape. Even at every stem, if you want a really thick handle. Make sure you tape all the way to the bottom. Try not to leave any metal sticking out, it tends to get harder to cut them at the end. If they do stick out, cut them off flush to where you finished taping right away to avoid difficulties later.
 


Keep going through all the bunches of flowers, remembering to go from the largest to the smallest, and to space the same type of flower around the bouquet.

After each bunch, stop. And take a step back. Look at how its transforming into a bouquet. You may want to adjust some of them. Un tape and replace. This is the time to do it. Because once they are all wrapped up, it’s really too late. 

Once you wrapped all the flowers, see if there are still any little holes. This is when you can make a filler. I usually take the main color to make these. In this case, the main color was the mint color. I simply take a strip of fabric, fold it in half, and do a slip stitch across. When I gather it up, I want to stay in an inch to two inches thickness. I knot my string to keep the bunch together. I take a circle and do the same steps as when I stem the flowers, except I fold it in half to enclose the accordion like filler.
 
 
 
These can be tucked into any little hole.
Once you’re happy with how the bouquet looks you can add brooches, which is done the same way as the flowers.  You can skip this little part if you’re not adding brooches.
To stem the brooches is the same way as the flowers. You can use felt circles to make them more sturdy, or you can glue when the wire connects with the back of the brooch.
Finally you’re almost done!! The last part is to make sure everything is secure. Generously tape from as high as you can go to the bottom of the stems.  This again, will give it more thickness, so if you feel its thick enough, simply go over it one last time quickly to ensure the stems are well wrapped together.
There you have it! You’ve wrapped your flowers into a beautiful bouquet!!

 

Hope you enjoyed.
Check back for more tutorials!
 
Please leave a comment :)

 


 

Monday, July 8, 2013

How to make 2 different rose flowers, using the same technique.


Tutorial Time!!

How to make 2 different rose flowers, using the same technique.

I’ll also show you how I wire my flowers so they have a stem.

First you need to decide on what type of fabric and color you’d like to use.

I’ll be using my flowers for a bouquet I’m making. So I decided on a satin, mint color fabric.

Here is the project I’m working on.



 

Begin by folding your fabric in half several times, until it’s about a foot wide. This will make it easier for you to cut a straighter line.



Keeping in mind that you will be folding your strip in half, you want to figure out how thick your rose will be. I’m making mine about 1 inch thick, so I’m cutting my fabric 2 inches thick.

 
Prepare a needle and thread. Try using the same color as your fabric, but in the end, it’s really not a big deal because you won’t see the thread. (  I’m a rebel, what can I say J )

Then fold you fabric length wise in half.



 

Begin your running stitch at the top corner or bottom corner. Doing it at the bottom corner will simply help tuck that opening in when you start rolling your flower. Or you can start at the top and glue that pocket down later.



Do a running stick across the top, gathering the fabric off the needle as you go.



Once you feel like you’ve done enough to make a nice circle, you can stop here. This is your first flower. You’d simply cut the fabric off, and sew the beginning of your fabric to the end of your fabric.

Or you can continue going.




Once you’ve done the length of fabric you desire, (obviously more fabric making a thicker, larger flower) you need to leave about 5 inches of extra thread. This will let you loosen some of your fabric when you roll it.

 


Go to the start of your fabric. Here is where you want to glue down the little pocket if you didn’t start at the bottom. Rotate your fabric into a circle, gluing it down once in a while to keep it from coming apart.



Once you get closer to the end, you’ll want to start pulling your fabric to loosen it.



When you come to the end, glue down the end of your thread so it doesn’t come undone, and snip the excess off. This is what the back will look like.

And the front. It will look different if you turned it tighter, or lose. I did tighter at the start, and less at the end.  



Next I’ll show you how to stem your flowers with a wire and felt. I use an 18 gauge wire. But 20 would be ok as well.

Cut a circle out of the felt.

Fold it in half and snip two slits into it.

 
 




 

Pass the wire through the two holes.
 

Bend the wire in half.

 


Add glue to the back, making sure you add some where the wire comes through so it glues well to the flower.

Twist the wire together. And voila! A fabric flower with a stem!

 
 
 







You can finish off the roses with a nice pearl or bead in the centre.

Hope you enjoyed.

Check back for more tutorials !!

Please leave a comment :)

 

 

 

Friday, July 5, 2013

My Intro to the Blogging World

To start off, I'd like to let everyone know that blogging is very new to me. I do a lot of research on the internet and until now, I did not realize that most of the sites I went on were blogs! (Don't I feel stupid).

A friend of mine told me I should start blogging to get my creations (fabric bouquets) and all the other artsy farsty things I've been up too (mostly wedding related for now) out in the internet world.

So I YouTubed about blogs and started designing my page. So far so good if I say so myself.

I'd love to hear what you regular bloggers have for me. Tips would be great!

A quick overview of how I fell upon making fabric bouquets

Any women who is dating a guy for a while, will secretly plan a few elements of her wedding. (If ever the boyfriend could propose, you'd have the basics of what you'd like.)
I was one of those girls. I'm a pinaholic (someone addicted to Pinterest) and I had a board for wedding ideas that I liked. One ideas was to have a fabric/brooch bouquet to be able to cherish for the rest of my life with my better half.
Finally! The BIG day came and my husband to be proposed to me! (its a pretty good story, but I'll keep that for another post). Anyways, so away I go on making my Pinterest board a reality! I start looking online for prices on these beautiful fabric bouquets to only figure out that I'd have to work  a few months to pay for just one, let alone one for each of my bridesmaids, flower girls and so on.
I'm a pretty crafty kind of lady so I told myself I could make these myself. I researched for a few weeks. Found fantastic tutorial on YouTube and Google Search. I gathered the fabrics, brooches and other little details I wanted and began my project. Here is what I came up with
 These are my mother and mother-in-law-to-be's wrist corsage. Made with a stretch lace wrist band and large flower.
This is the one of the flower girls Pomanders. Its made from a small foam ball. I created several flowers and then glued them all on the ball. I added a white ribbon to hold.

This is my bouquet (I did not add the handle yet because it would take up much more room 'til the wedding day). Using the same idea as the Pomander. I got a larger foam ball made several flowers and glued those on with the brooches and other little details.  

Same for the bridesmaids. I used a medium size ball and followed the same steps.
 
 
This is when Forever Bouquet was born. I since then have  made dozens of orders including bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres, headbands, and sashes.
 
 
I will eventually do a step by step tutorial on how to make a bouquet similar to these. I'll attach the link at that time.
 
Thank you:)
Sophie
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