March 21, 2012

CRASH MY STASH: No-sew Fabric Flowers!


Posted by Ethne~

Well, Friends, now that it’s officially spring, I have Spring Fever!  It has kinda felt like we flowed right from fall into spring with this whack job winter we’ve had, but I’m in full-on spring mode now.  Time to rock it.

I may or may not love pastel colors, which, unless you’re decorating for a baby nursery, is not cool to admit.  Which means, I’ll deny it to the grave.  But…a very colorful palette is just what I need to brighten my days until the leaves fully pop.  The lilac outside my house is trying really hard, so it’ll be soon!

So, I’ve scoured some of Lor’s and my fave blogs and Pinterest.  If you aren’t on Pinterest yet, you are still in the dark ages like my dad, and that’s saying a lot since he just got an iPhone last weekend.  He even sent me a text pic of his lazy cat.  We’re talking the equivalent jump in modern science of Einstein coming to his Theory of Relativity.

Dad & Mom Connie's lazy cat Louie

And on a complete tangent, I Google searched the Theory of Relativity the other day and according to Wikipedia, and I’m paraphrasing, Einstein’s postulate leaves open the possibility of time travel.  Be sure you take my interpretation of this scientific leap and its applications to, among other things, finding new planets by looking at their gravitational pull on their home planet.  WTF?  I’ll leave theorizing aspects of the known universe to Stephen Hawking and get back to the equally important task of brightening my day with…no-sew fabric flowers!!

Soon enough!

I found 16” long dowels in the woodworking section of JoAnn’s – 20 dowels for $.99.  Oh yeah.  I wanna say the width of the dowels are ¼”.  CAUTION: you can find similar dowels in the cake-decorating section – 10 for $3.  Forget that.

Sprayed sticks

I purchased apple green spray paint on clearance for $2.97.  Shaun helped me spray the sticks {outside} by inserting them into a piece of cardboard just enough for them to stand up tall.  Don’t worry about that little end that won’t get painted – you cover that up with the fabric of your flower and no one will be the wiser.  It took just a minute to spray them, and they were okay to handle in 20 minutes.

While my dowels were drying into their apple green glory, I cut strips of colorful fabric – crash my stash!  My strips are 2” wide by 16” long, give or take.


Ready, Set, Glue!

Warm up your glue gun and spread your materials in front of you.  You’ll have to be careful not to burn your fingers.  I’ll admit that I had a blister by the end of this project.

Making these is not an exact science.  It took a little practice to get the fabric to look just like I wanted it, but basically, this is what I did:

Gather about 3-4 pleats of the end of your fabric strip and squeeze a dab of glue onto the center of it.  Smoosh the un-painted end of your dowel flower stem into the glue and try to keep the fabric gathered together.  This will make the start of your flower.

Scrunchie

Keep gathering a couple of pleats at a time and secure with glue as you wrap the fabric strip around and around.  I found that I needed secure the pleats on the inside and outside as I wrapped.  Just secure with glue wherever you need to. 

I made and glued a few pleats at a time

Keep your wrapping a little loose so it looks like a rose as it’s opening.  I found it looked nice to angle the fabric strip downwards slightly as I wrapped the fabric to give it some depth.

Angling down a little bit

I wrapped a little circle of felt, with a snip cut up the center of it, around the base of the flower to cover the glue and fabric ends.




That’s it!  No sewing, nominal mess, and a pretty quick project.  You can throw this together for your own house or for a bouquet to bring to Easter.  Mine went on my new counter-height dining room table (which we were forced to buy since Emma broke one of the last solid chairs from our old table set.  Sure, we could’ve gotten new chairs, but we’ve wanted a table for a long time so it was just the right time).

Please excuse the unsightly accessories around my lovely vase;
this was an in-progress shot.

Have a wonderful spring, y’all!

4 comments:

Nina Munchen said...

bless us, we're pinterest user, we are not in the dark agee *LOL

Pinterest is a great way to socialized with everyone :)
I love Pinterest's unique interface :)

Just in case you haven't heard. There's also another site developed for Pinterest user to submit their favorite pins, discuss and do social voting as well. You might want to check it out.
www.pinfaves.com

phd thesis writing services said...

Very nice blog. Thanks for share it

Mergers and Acquisitions consultant said...

Well, it’s a nice one, I have been looking for. Thanks for sharing such informative stuff.

Nina said...

Such content makes life easier.