Vintage CQ...Flower #15...A Tutorial

I've been so inspired by the vintage crazy quilts I've seen lately and by my own collection of digital images of the old crazies.

Here is a three dimensional flower that I decided to try and interpret for my ongoing Vintage CQ project.

The petals were constructed individually from two pieces of fabric...so I thought I would try that too.

I used very lightweight silk and a thin sewing machine thread to make these small shapes easy to turn...

I drew my shapes on one of my petal fabrics...

...and set my sewing machine to a pretty short stitch. (Ha! You can see my camera reflected in the sewing machine!)

Here the shapes are sewn.

And here they are cut out, with a very narrow seam allowance.
Notice that the three petaled shape is sewn all the way around. To turn it I made a slit in the back, because I knew that wouldn't show, and turned the shape inside out.

This is the basic arrangement...

I tacked down each petal at its base.
And I am sorry, but I forgot to photograph what I did with the center section, which was to make a circle of short basting stitches in the center and pull the thread, to gather the section...but you'll see that in the picture of the finished flower.

But first, the leaves....

I decided to use 1/2" wired ribbon, as it would give a nice puffy look to the leaves, to go with the puffy petals. This picture shows pulling the wire on one end to start gathering the ribbon.

Then I cut the ribbon to length (about 2 1/2"), carefully pulled the wire out on the other end, and gathered the ribbon toward the center. The wires are twisted a few times to secure the gathers.

After that, I just shaped the leaf, tucking the wires to the back.
I made four leaves, and appliqued them onto my little block behind the flower petals.

The center has some cast-on stitch loops made of cotton DMC Flower thread. They nicely cover up my gathering stitches.

So while this flower really doesn't look much like the vintage one that inspired it...still, it is a direct descendant!

I've got a very busy week ahead, so I won't be posting again until midweek next week.
Happy Stitching, everyone!