Re-do, part 1 (probably of several) - roses

The current Historical Sew Fortnightly challenge is "Re-do", defined as:
"Pick any previous challenge and re-do it (or do it for the first time). It could be one that you didn’t finish, one that you wish you’d had more time for, or any time for, or one where you loved the theme so much you want to do it again."

Well, it's been a while since I've done much Historical Sew Fortnightly sewing, but this challenge throws up so many opportunities that the main problem is, where to start?

Under "one that you didn't finish" comes my Politics of Fashion Wiener Werkstätte dress and, specifically, the roses.

The first one turned out really well; exactly what I wanted.

It all started so well . . .

Unfortunately things went downhill from there! I just couldn't get my subsequent attempts to produce the flat flowers that I needed for the dress. Eventually I gave up in disgust.

The re-do challenge has inspired me to have another go. I unpicked the later roses and tried again. It took a couple of attempts, but eventually I produced the other five roses I needed for the sleeves and the dress corners.

The smaller roses on the bodice are made from narrower tubes of a different satin, and also turned out nice and flat.

The bodice decoration - apologies for the grainy image

However despite my best efforts and my new-found skills in rose flatness, the large bodice roses turned out very flouffy indeed.

Flat rose and flouffy rose

So I decided to cheat. I cut out small circles from a scrap of pelmet vilene left over from making last year's straw bag, stitched a double thickness thread into the centre back of the rose, pulled the ends of the thread through the vilene disk, and tied them in a knot.

Rose flattening - after and before

So now I have a selection of roses, in different sizes and colours.

Finished roses

When I checked through the previous posts about this project, I realised that I hadn't explained how the leaves were made. I hadn't taken any 'in progress' photos either (bad blogger!), so I part unpicked a leaf in order to explain now. Each leaf is made from half a circle of green satin. The half circle is folded to form a cone, then the raw straight edge is turned under and slip-stitched in place. Finally the curved edge is gathered through the double thickness, and the gathering pulled tight to form the leaf.

Leaf in progress and completed

Now all I need to do is assemble the leaves and flowers on the dress.