Bloomin' in the snow

For the past week, I've been looking out the window to this every morning:

So it's been a great thing that my materials for making the fabric flowers arrived on Monday! We slid down to the post office and I dived right in... and so far, I have about 15 flowers to show for it. It doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm a slow worker when it comes to craft stuff, and I gotta say... I think they're going to be totally worth the work. Johnny and Mom have both been impressed so far, which has gone a long way to erase any doubts of "oh my gosh, can I actually make them look good?" that have crept up so far.

I've been working on white peonies and sparkly pink things that were supposed to be roses but look more like fluffy carnations. I have some other patterns and methods in mind for the two shades of taupe fabric that I still haven't tried yet, but here's what I've made with the first two.

"Peonies" (sorta):

First, I made a pattern (check out my awesome bedspread, btw).

Next, I doubled my white fabric over until I had four layers, and traced around the pattern.

Then I cut 'em out until I had a big stack of these beauties.

Now it's time to play with fire! I singed the edges of the fabric to keep it from unraveling (which is why all the fabrics I'm using are poly blends or straight-up synthetic -- cotton and linen don't play well with fire. Plus, the singed edge gives it a little depth, which I like.

Then you end up with a lot of these.

Stack four of 'em together and throw in a couple of stitches to keep the shape the way you want it, and you get...

(Apologies for skipping to the end on this one... I was watching a lot of Bones while stitching these together and got too wrapped up with the Gormogon vault stuff to remember to take pics.)

Roses/Carnations/Rosenations/"flowers":

First, cut a loooooong strip (about 3" wide) from the end of your fabric (probably about 45" in length - trim the edges off, if there's selvage on the ends):

Then wrap the fabric around your fingers like so, and pin it together.

Cut a rounded petal shape into one edge of your fabric roll.

Aaaaaand it's time to burninate! Toast the strip around all edges (i.e. straight side and curvy side -- and this fabric melts super-fast).

Start rolling up your strip and stitching it together at the bottom, arranging the petals and holding them in place with your fingers as you go to achieve the shape you desire. (This is the hard part -- I tried running a basting stitch along the bottom and just rolling it up, but that didn't really work with this particular type of fabric. And, thus, my fingers and hands are super-hurty from holding petals in place, but it's worth it).

(Yeah, it looks like a sparkly pink wad right now, buuuut...)

Ta-da! You have yourself a pink sparkly flower of some sort. They don't look exactly how I thought they'd look, but I still really like them -- I was worried that they'd be overpoweringly sparkly, but I think they'll look great with the plain linen and muslin looks of my others.

I'm pretty happy with my work so far, and I love seeing the pile of flowers in my Giant Tupperware Box 'O Wedding growing bigger every day. I'll give more step-by-steps of the other flower designs I come up with and of the process of attaching the blooms to the wire stems. Woo!

Oh, Amazon, how I love thee.

I'm posting to keep the head rush of making my first big wedding-related purchase from making me spazz out at the circ desk.
I think I've mentioned before that I've been hankering to get started on my fabric flowers while it's still winter, while I have snow days to work on some of my more time-consuming projects. But -- it's hard to make something without the stuff to do it, and it's kind of hard for me to just waltz out and buy fabric. The nearest fabric store is in Johnson City, and I'd been itching for weeks to make a trip to Hancock's. This weekend, I had a chance to run in while on the way to dinner with my future-outlaws-family. I burst through the doors thinking I was going to find everything I needed right then -- but nope. Maybe it was just that I felt rushed, but I didn't see anything that really matched what I had in my mind, and I've made it a cardinal rule for myself not to put money into something that I don't know for certain that I'll want and use. So, I decided to wait.
I was contemplating other places to buy fabric when Mom asked me if I'd looked online. Why no, I hadn't... and so, I did.
After about an hour of surfing fabric websites and not feeling entirely sure where to plunk down my cash (though at least I was finding options of stuff that looked just like what I needed), I started wondering if I could buy fabric through Amazon. And guess what? You can!

I found a pretty good selection of synthetics and blends in colors that fit (to keep the edges of the petals from fraying, you have to toast the edges over a candle flame, and that doesn't really work unless the fabric is at least half synthetic), and the prices were great. I went ahead and ordered fabric for all the bouquets and the reception centerpieces, along with some felt for making felt flowers for the reception as well. I bought most of the extras, too -- some more needles since Mom's are all rusty, thread, cloth-covered florists' wire, glue sticks for the glue gun.
For $111 (including shipping), I think I've got most of the flowers taken care of (which is pretty good for seven bouquets, seven boutonnieres, and reception flowers!). There are a few odds and ends that I'm going to buy in-person at stores, such as buttons to go with some of the flowers (which I plan to buy at a local independent craft store that has just what I want) and ribbon (Amazon's ribbon selection was teh suck for me, but that's okay). I'll probably end up ordering wheat to go in the bouts/maybe in the bouquets/in the centerpieces when I order manzanita branches for the picture tree. And Mom has a ton of lace she'll let me use, which is fantastic.
So! Project Flowers is on the way. I also got some great encouragement about it over the weekend from Joy, one of my bridesmaids, who said she liked the idea of not killing flowers so they can be pretty just for one day. A woman after my own heart... and the fact that she said that helped J wrap his brain around it being an acceptable flouting of tradition :)
For my own reference, I started a list of what supplies I've bought and what I still need. My DIY project list has morphed some more, but I'll save another post on that for when I'm pretty sure it's set.
In the meantime, here's an idea of what I look forward to making:

Weddingbee's Mrs. Locket's DIY Fabric Flowers Series:

• Ditching The Florist...
• Vintage Fabric Flowers - Bouquets In Progress
• How Does Your Garden Sew? Part I: Garden Roses
• How Does Your Garden Sew? Part II: Attaching The Stems
• Bridal Bouquet In Bloom
• Lockets In Love: Pretty Little Details (Part I) -- with professional pics of Mrs. Locket's finished (gorgeous) handiwork