Flowers and yoyos

Already two years ago I founded a sewing/crafting group, where we met about every two weeks to do little sewing projects together. My initial idea was that we would take turns to prepare the projects and leading the others, but in the end it has been always me. The others have been mostly working moms with few times for sewing and they appreciated the possibility to do a project that could be finished on one evening without looking for instructions and wasting time on preparing. 

After about 9 month the group like went to sleep. But now there have been quite a few requests to renew it and yesterday we had the first meeting with also some new members. We discussed a bit the projects to realize in the future, so I can now prepare for it. They kind of insisted in paying for my tutorial work and therfor I am a bit stressed to find the right way to teach  so everybody is satisfied.

We started with a little deco project. I prepared some examples of fabric flowers and Yoyos ...

The Yoyo on the little zipper bag is matching the lining. I also fixed one with hot-glue to a cloth-pin. I like to use that for example to pin a note on a present.

Some very little Yoyos I fixed to a birch crown together with some leaves I made out of fabric scraps that I glued together with Flisofix and a piece of wire inside. 

I also made small flowers that I fixed with hot glue to sticks. Those three I planted in a piece of floating wood so they can stay upright on the table.

They are also doing very nice in one of my deco houses:

I made some experiences with instructions for Japanese fabric flowers (Kanzashi), but I didn't managed to get as pretty results as shown in the examples. Somehow mine have been either bulky or when I used lighter fabric they were floppy. 

So I got back to a technique I already used years ago. Make yourself some triangles by cutting a 9x9cm square diagonally. Then fold them and close the shorter side to get a new rectangular triangle. Turn them to the right side, iron them and pull a thread trough like you can see in the picture below (red example). Finally pull the thread on both sides and fix the five petals to a round. Glue the stick in the middle and also two felt circles or buttons to hide the middle.

On the picture above you can see also an other example: The white one is giving round petals. You cut squares about 7,5x7,5cm, fold them in half, iron them and then you cut the rectangular corner off in a half circle. The rest stays the same. You pull a thread through the open side and plead the petals.... (click on the photo to see the stitching better).

It has been a fun evening yesterday, trying out all those things with the girls and chatting a lot. This will be repeated!

A bientôt,
Jane