Flowers - part 2

There is good news and bad news regarding progress on the flowers I began on the flower-making course in Huddersfield. The bad news is that my silk petal flower got a bit squished in my bag on the journey back. It can be restored with some TLC, I just haven’t had the time to apply any yet. So here is a photograph of its un-squished form in Sue and Marie’s studio.

Silk petal rose

The good news is that I finished my beaded flower. Sue had made up various mixes of different coloured beads for us to work with; pale shades, reds, blues etc. I used the pale and blue mixes.

My colour choices

It was great fun, making up petals with differing proportions of pale and dark beads. The possible variations in shading were endless, and I could easily (and happily) have made up enough petals to create a beaded chrysanthemum! I managed to restrict myself to making seven full-sized petals, however. Because they are made from wire, the petals can be shaped with different amounts of curl.

Flat and curled shaded petals

Then because I couldn’t resist, I made three smaller petals as well. The wire ends were twisted together to form the centre of the flower, and the wire wrapped in green thread.

Making up the centre section

The larger petals were then added one or two at a time.

With the larger petals added

I fancied making a sort of corsage, so followed Sue’s lead and mixed up some different shades of green beads, and made two leaves. These were made longer than the petals, simply by doing two rows with the same number of beads rather than adding or decreasing one in each row.

One of the leaves

These were twisted onto the wire ‘stem’ of the flower. Then I wrapped a scrap of fabric round it to give it some shape, and covered it with a small piece of blue/gold shot silk (which doesn’t photograph well!) finally I sewed a brooch pin onto the back of the silk-covered base, and now I have a ‘lily’ corsage brooch, with petals which wobble quite convincingly when it’s worn.

The finished brooch

This was immense fun to do. I especially liked the idea of mixing colours, but you could make petals in a single colour, or different colours following a pattern rather than the random effect here. This could easily get addictive!