Hill Country Sewer: wedding

This weekend was full of craftiness! It started with dying a custom shirt for an Etsy order.

Saturday I made origami snowflakes for the wedding. Thank you to my awesome friends for helping me out with wedding things this weekend! You all rock!

Today I told myself was quilting day. It was finally time to sit down and sew this quilt together. I decided to free motion meandering loops all over the quilt. I started in high spirits, but gradually got frustrated. My thread kept breaking and my top stitches were too loose. I was getting close to throwing my machine out the window. Amazingly mom called in the middle of all of this, so I was telling her what was going on. I suddenly realized that I very stupidly did not drop the feed dogs on my machine!

Feed dogs: (n), A set of feed dogs typically resembles two or three short, thin metal bars, crosscut with diagonal teeth, which move back and forth in slots in a sewing machine's needle plate. Their purpose is to pull ("feed") the fabric through the machine, in discrete steps, in-between stitches.

When free motion quilting you do not want the fabric to be fed through the machine. You want to have control of it and feed it through manually.

One of my problems was solved. Now what about the breaking thread? I was sewing with Coats & Clark Star cotton machine quilting thread. I switched to Guterman polyester sew-all thread. Ta-da! No breakage. I'm thinking the free motion movement was too stressful on the cotton thread and caused it to break. The polyester thread seems to be more sturdy. I've read about plenty of people free motion quilting with cotton thread, but I just don't think my machine likes it.

This week's project: finish quilting.

For my wedding I decided to make all of my flowers out of fabric. Yes, this includes bouquets, corsages and boutonnieres. When it came time to making the boutonnieres I just couldn't find a tutorial that was aimed at what I wanted to do. I dedicate this tutorial to all the DIY brides out there that want to make their own boutonnieres for their wedding.

This tutorial has multiple parts on how to make a fabric rose boutonniere: how to make the stem, the flower, the greenery for the flower and how to wrap the stem with ribbon to make it all pretty!

Items you need:
low heat glue gun
pliers
iron
needle and thread
two 11" squares of satin
25" of 7/8" ribbon
12" of 3/8" ribbon
floral tape
18" floral stem wire (gauge doesn't matter)
green cotton fabric scraps
fusible interfacing scraps

Let's start by making the stem. Start with your floral wire and fold it in half. You will get a loop on one end.

Using your pliers pinch the loop closed.

Fold the wire in half again. This time you will have two loops. Close them both with the pliers. Set aside.

Now it's time to make the flower. Cut your fabric into two 11" squares. Lay the fabric on top of each other with right sides together and wrong sides out. I used Baroque satin for these flowers.

Pin your two pieces together in a spiral pattern.

Cut the corners off the square so you have a circle. Next, cut in between your pins so that you end up with a fully-pinned fabric spiral.

Starting in the center of your spiral, sew along the outer edge of your fabric spiral with a quarter inch seam allowance.

Turn your spiral right sides out.

Let's put the stem and the flower together! Get the hot glue gun and put a drop of hot glue on one end of the wire. Pick up your spiral and put the hot glued end of the wire inside the center of the spiral. This acts as a cover so the end of the wire won't be sticking out.

Beginning at the inner spiral, start rolling up your fabric around the end of the floral wire. As you roll up your spiral to form a rose, add drops of hot glue to the fabric base to keep it in place. You can sew the rose together with anchor stitches as you go, but I found that hot glue holds the flower together better.

When you have your desired rose size, cut off the remaining spiral fabric and glue the end down.

Next, I anchor the bottom together with stitches. This helps pull the fabric together to really give it a rose shape. It doesn't have to be perfect because no one will see the bottom.

At this point you have your flower attached to your stem. I like to trim off any extra frayed fabric on the bottom of the flower. It will help make it easier when adding the greenery to the flower.

Next, take your floral tape and wrap it around the floral wire. Set aside.

Moving onto how to make the greenery...Let me preface the step by saying that when I make the leaves, I like to stiffen the green cotton fabric with interfacing because I like to work with a stiffer cotton fabric. You can always use green canvas as an alternative.

Take your fusible interfacing and sandwich it in between two scraps of green fabric. Iron the fusible interfacing between the fabrics.

From this green fabric cut out a circle for the bottom of the flower as well as leaves. You can make the leaves any size or style you want. The picture below is what I chose to make for these flowers. I can't say I precisely measured the size of the circle or the leaves, I just eyeballed it, but for those that need measurements:

circle: 1" - 1 1/2" in diameter

leaves: 1 1/2" - 2" tall by 3/8" wide

Fold the circle in half and cut a slit in the middle of the circle. Slide it on the stem so it is on the bottom of the flower. Hot glue the green circle to the flower.

Next, glue your leaves to the bottom and sides of the flower. Make sure you cover up where the fabric ends on the flower with a leaf. At this point you have a completed flower! Now to make it fancy!