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| My fabric flowers now have ribbon leaves! |
If you took my suggestion to heart and decided to make some flowers for Mom's day next week, you still have time to embellish them with leaves.
Today's post will share some thoughts on making those leaves. Then I'll also show you a flower that can withstand the rain. ;-)
There are probably many ways to make leaves for these, but this particular idea came to me in the middle of the night. (I hate when that happens. Ever since life "changed", I don't sleep well and there's nothing worse than waking up at 3:00 am thinking about how to work out a sewing problem!)
Last week, I said that with their unfinished edges, these flowers are charmingly rustic. Well, this leaf solution using ribbon is similarly rustic and matches well with the look of the flowers.
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| Using a piece of ribbon to make a leaf... |
Hopefully the pictures are self-explanatory. Take a small section of ribbon (the wider the better; mine was 1-1/2" wide) with the ends cut at an angle as shown.
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| I got twelve leaves out of 2 yards of ribbon... |
Fold the ends over each other and pin, then sew one line of stitching down the middle to secure.
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| Hot glue the leaves to the flower stems... |
Use your hot glue gun again to stick the leaf onto the stem of your flower as shown above. I chose to place mine around the joints of the bamboo sticks.
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| I must admit, the leaves do add to the overall arrangement... |
My ribbons were from the discount bin at Michaels and from Dollarama, so if you have something similarly cheap to use, it's an easy, convenient option. Otherwise, I would use fabric scraps. You can easily draw a leaf template and use it to cut out what you need.
Like it? Want to keep it? For a copy of this tutorial in PDF format, download it for free here!
If using fabric, I would do the same treatment as for the flower; i.e., use two layers of fabric, sew them together around the edges and leave the seams raw. While I preferred how the lighter weight fabric performed for the flowers (the purple and black Babble), I would suggest heavier fabric for the leaves so that they don't droop too much. The advantage of ribbons is that they had a natural firmness to them.
After finishing my twelve fabric flowers, I had a thought about my ever-present supply of waxcloth. So of course, I had to try this project out with my favourite...
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| Giant waxcloth rose... and I actually went out to my backyard to find a stick to put it on! |
This one is a bit bigger than the rest, as you can see from this picture. (And of course, you can add waxcloth leaves too.)
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| A giant among us... |
Just as a point of reference, if you happen to have wider width fabric like this waxcloth (which was 54" wide), cut the strip 6" high. Make each "scalloped" section 3" wide.
The advantage of using a laminate like waxcloth is that your flowers can then be displayed outdoors. Don't you think they would make a great addition to your deck or patio this summer? And no watering needed!
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