A Busy Week, Paper Flowers and a Winner

This week promises to be a busy one for my blog.  I’m starting the week with some spring decorating and picking the winner of my Amy Butler giveaway.   Along with my usual garment post I am also planning a new tutorial for later in the week, something that will appeal to everyone whether you like to quilt, machine embroider, or any other number of crafty ventures.  Then on Friday I will wind up the week by participating in a blog tour showcasing a newly released sewing book, hot off the presses.   My blog is one of five that will be participating in this tour, sponsored by Clotilde.  Please make sure you check back regularly this week for all of the items I have planned.

For today I’ll start out with the winner of the Amy Butler sewing kit giveaway.  Congratulations to Tara who left me a comment late last night.  I used Random.org to generate the winner.  There were 14 comments but one person asked not to be included so out of the 13 eligible entries, the computer picked #13.  Tara, I hope you enjoy your new goodies, and I would love to see what you do with them. 

 

Spring officially arrived yesterday and I was motivated to change out some décor in my dining room.  For the winter holidays I love to put out a set of paper magnolias that my mother-in-law gave me years ago.  The supple paper reminds me of aged leather, and each year they darken just a bit into a warm, glowing champagne color.  I was long overdue to pack them away.  In their place I’ve added some paper blooms I recently made myself.  Clover has a clever new product called Flower Frills, templates that allows you to quickly make fabric and paper flowers in four sizes.  You simply fold your fabric or paper using the heavy weight paper template, cut and string together to make your flowers.  I used some handmade scrapbooking paper I had on hand and made seven different flowers.  These went together quickly and were very fun to make.  For each of my flowers I used about 8 petals – the weight of the paper allowed for a very full flower (the instructions suggest using 15-20 petals for fabric flowers).  One note:  both sides of the material used are visible in the finished flower so choose your fabric accordingly.  A very interesting affect might be achieved with double-sided scrapbook paper.

I’m currently displaying these on the sideboard in my dining room.  I placed the largest blooms inside two oversized brandy snifters and placed the remaining flowers on individual ceramic spoons by CB2.

I can imagine so many uses of these flowers in both fabric and paper.  You just might be seeing a lot of these on my blog in weeks to come.

Welcome spring!