Flower Obsession

It started with a book ‘Kanashi in Bloom’ and then became an obsession. During the last couple of weeks flower power has hit the sewing room! I have probably made around 60 odd flowers, each one a learning curve and then taking me in new directions. If only they had a perfume my sewing room would be a fragrant, floral haven.

It started with Kanashi which is the fabric origami equivalent. Kanzashi is a traditional Japanese art form of folding and stitching fabric petals for use as beautiful decorations. You can buy all sorts of makes from companies like Clover but there is really no need as it is quite a simple method to make without any additional help.

I made these flowers using a variety of different Kanashi techniques – these are great for stash busting all those odds and ends of fabric that we all have lurking. Not enough to make a garment from but too much fabric to throw away!

My interest now moved on to other ways to make flowers from fabric so researched the internet and my many sewing magazines and books to find other methods. I then produced these which are similar to the Kanashi flowers but do not require any folding:

Nice but still moving on I found a great tutorial on YouTube for flowers using the ‘burnt’ method. That was it I was off to QD to purchase a plethora of tealights.

Aren’t these pretty and so much fun – these were used with leftover lining material. I then moved on to roses:

By now I really had the bit between my teeth and then started making loads with different themes, using jewellery and bits and bobs from the sewing room – combining flowers to make corsages, adding wire for floral displays etc. Some of these are, in my opinion, a bit tacky as the gold material I used is a bit strong but this was just for fun and kept me amused for hours and hours!

Finally I had the great idea of combining a few to make a fabric corsage: