Tuesday's Tute: Lace Flower

black lace corsage on jacket (sorry hard to see black on black in the picture)

This tutorial came about while working on Curly's Christmas outfit.  I'm making her a skirt, top, jacket set for this year.  Prior years she wore some type of dress of red and black.  This year I wanted to do something different.  We're repurposing black satin and lace from a free-to-us formal for the skirt.  I'm searching for a cobalt blue something to make a top.  We have a little black velvet jacket to top it off.  But, the little jacket needed something to make it special...hence this flower and our tutorial.

Flower tutorials are favorites of ours. Versions of this one can be found elsewhere on the internet. However, ours has a few differences.

Materials:

Lightweight lace fabric (beaded/sequined venetian lace from the sleeve of a formal in our case)

Needle and Thread

You can use other types of fabrics for this projects.  If the fabric happens to fray and you don't want it to, you can use a flame to heat seal your "circles".  This tutorial shows you how.

Directions:

 1. Cut about 15 circles for a corsage sized flower (not perfect ones).  A bit of irregularity makes the flower more interesting.
*** If you are using a beaded lace, paint the back side of the fabric with a fabric glue/water mixture or fray check and let dry to hold the bead threads in place after you cut. Otherwise you'll cut your beads loose.***

 2. Fold a circle in half.

 3. In half again (quarters). Quarters will be used for the outer petals.

 4. In half again (eighths).  Eighths are used for the inner petals.

 5. Put a couple of stitches 1/4" from the point of your folded petal.

 6. Stitch petals together.

 7. Continue to stitch eighths petals together in circular bunch until you have a nice full center.  Then use fourths petals to add to the base of the flower.  How many eighths and fourths you use is completely up to how you want your flower to look.

8. When you've added all the petals you'd like put a few more stitches into your flower to make it secure and then tie off with several knots, stitches, and a few more knots.
You can use this flower as a pin, hair clip, or on a headband...options are endless.
Since we only used one sleeve of this pretty fabric for this flower, I think we may try a large lace bow for a hair accessory.  Maybe it will be next Tuesday's Tutorial...  I also have a few ideas for legwarmers.  We'll see which idea gets made first.

Happy Sewing!
Debbie