All Things Flowery

Today was the day for my Anything Art bee.  We met at Toni's lovely home near Morrisville.  The topic of the day was making fabric flowers.  Ruth-Ellen had attended a crazy quilt conference and showed us how to make several different types of flowers to add to quilts or clothing.  Here are two of Ruth-Ellen's class projects.

First, we made rolled up flowers from narrow strips of wool felt that we stitched through. These can be embellished with beads or stacked on another flower.  I have a project in mind for these.

Then we took lace and stitched it to a Timtex circle, ruffling or pleating it as we stitched.  I used some lace that I painted with Setacolor a long time ago.

Of course the blank circle in the middle would be covered with another layer of flower or embellishment.

Next we stitched big rick-rack into flower shapes.

And then tried stitching it to a Timtex circle like we did the lace.

Here is a tiny flower circle made with very narrow rickrack.

Then we took two silky fabrics that were bonded together, and cut circles.  We snipped the edges of the circles to make flower-shaped disks. Mine needs to have the outside pencil lines trimmed off.

Then, you can have fun stacking your flowers in different combinations.

Kathy experimented with putting Ruth-Ellen's painted silk flower on top of her own lace flower, and Ruth-Ellen let her keep it!

Here is a cute stacked flower that has two layers of rick-rack, plus buttons and beads, made by Ruth-Ellen.

Ruth-Ellen had lots of beautiful bead work and log cabin works-in-progress to inspire us.  You can see more of her work on her blog here.

On the way home, I stopped to pick up one of my paintings that I had framed at Michael's on Capital Boulevard.  This painting of hollyhocks was from my class last fall at Art of the Carolinas, taught by Karlyn Holman.

Wow, what a difference it makes to have a painting matted and framed!  Love it!  I am ready to sign up for my classes for the next Art of the Carolinas in November.