Saturday, December 26, 2009

Stitches, Feathers and Glue; A Flower for Me and You

Enough ho-hum!  Enough with the Murphster!  I just got a big W on my scoreboard in the series of Wedding vs. Palindrome Bride!  Amidst curling and flooding, I finished making my bouquet, bridesmaids' pomanders, and grandmothers' corsages.  If you remember the bouts that I made, you'll know that I'm a trigger happy DIY feather fiend.  The ladies of the wedding party will not be left out of the feathery, wintery goodness!


For my bouquet, I used white silk lillies for some va-va-voom, along with hand sewn flowers and vintage brooches.  I wrapped the dowel rod handle with some quilt lining to add extra width and comfort, then I secured silk ribbon with pearl headed corsage pins and hot glue.


I incorporated a marabou feather boa, weaving it around the larger feathers and using it as a filler.  You can see it a little bit better in this close up.  I love how it softens the overall look - I almost want to snuggle my bouquet!  The brooch below is a little something blue, the locket on the handle is the one with Pap Pap's photo, and you may recognize the feathered friend in the last detail shot.



Back when I thought that 6" was the perfect styrofoam ball size, I bought all the styrofoam for 5 Palindromaids pomanders and my bouquet.  Since I used one for mock up purposes, I could not exchange it when I returned to Michael's for 4" balls.  I don't know why, but the $4.99 that I already paid for the one 6" ball was really eating at me, so I decided to use it for my bouquet.  Looking at it now, I probably could have gone smaller, but I rationalized it back then by saying that my bouquet should be bigger than the Palindromaids' flowers.  For reference, I took a shot of me holding it.  In pajamas.  In the middle of the afternoon. 


Shall we play a little game of "I Spy?"  I spy a menu chalkboard wannabee.  I spy a card box in training.  I spy the 3rd Season of Gilmore Girls from Netflix.  I spy Christmas gifts for the Palindromaids that I never got in the mail.  I spy a hot glue gun.  I spy the Palindromaid pomanders.


I've had the pomanders hanging from my fold out kitchen table cabinets for over 3 months now.  They're permanent fixtures at this point, and I hope that I can pry the hangers off of the hook.


Each of the pomanders ended up having a little personality.  I wish I could take the credit for handcrafting the personality to each Palindromaid, but what happened was much more random.  I started out thinking that I would make all of the fabric flowers first and then affix them to the styrofoam.  In reality, I finished what I thought would be enough flowers, to find out that it was only half the amount of needed flowers.  So I would make batches here and there out of one kind of fabric at a time.  Then I would adhere them all to the same pomander because I felt like if I finished one whole one, that I would feel better.  Each pomander ended up with more of one kind of fabric flower.  After scrutinizing each pomander, and basing part of the decision on the ratio of the length of the ribbon handle to the height of the Palindromaid, I made assignments.

Palindromaid of Honor E has airy tulle flowers from the scraps of my veil project.

The only reason I ever finished the corsages was because I was stuck at home amidst flood waters with nothing much to do besides watch Gilmore Girls and hot glue feathers to more fabric flowers.



When I had decided on fabric flowers, I thought I was inventive and cool.  After seeing so many fresh flower alternatives around, now I know I'm just cool.  :)  For me, making my own flowers has been relaxing and rewarding.  That sounds trite, but when I focused on this project, other wedding stresses faded.  Do you have a wedding project that helped to melt away the stress?

1 comment:

Genevieve said...

Wow! Those are beautiful!