gathered fabric flowers {tutorial}

Happy weekend!  I've been spending a lot of time these days trying to come up with crafts that perk me up (because of all the stress), and what better way than to make a bunch of flowers?!

I know, I know.... there are a billion ways to make fabric flowers nowadays (and trust me, I love every method.  I'm pretty sure I've tried every method.), but when I need to make something quick and have it look halfway decent, this is my favorite method. :)

:: Supplies I used ::

• Fabric
• Hot Glue Gun
• Scissors
• Needle & Thread
• Felt

Cut a strip of fabric.  You'll be folding this in half, and that will determine how "long" your "petal" is, so keep that in mind when deciding how wide to cut the fabric.  The wider your fabric, the bigger your petals, and the longer your fabric the bigger your overall flower will be.

Thread your needle, and create a knot at the end.  Fold the strip in half and start your sewing near the raw edge (not at the fold).  You'll notice my knotted thread, and I actually sewed around the side a couple of times to secure my knot in place (you really don't want that sucker to get out).

Sew along the raw edge in long stitches.  I kept my stitches at about half an inch.

When you've stitched the entire length of fabric, hold the thread at the end without the knot and gently start pulling your fabric towards the end with the knot.  You are 'gathering' your fabric. :)

You should end up with a scrunched up pile like this:

There are two kinds of flowers you can make from here.  You can space it out evenly and create a flat flower with space in the middle for a button or an accent:

Or you can wrap it around to create a more 3D flower:

Either way, glue it down to a piece of felt to secure the flower, and cut the remaining thread once the flower is secure.

You can try different lengths and widths of fabric to see what different variations of the flower you can make.  The dark orange and yellow fabrics were cut thinner than my light orange one, and it gave me more of a funky, zig zag petal pattern (which I liked). :)

Enjoy!

polka-dotted flower {pillow}

What a week!

How is it that when things break down, everything breaks down at once?  The cell phone was a bummer.  The internet was a bother.  But my car really put me over my stress limit.

Murphy's law, am I right?

Anyways, to cheer myself up I've been doing more crafting that usual, but as you know, I tend to do everything at once, so everything's anywhere from "just started" to "one more stitch and I'll be done".  Except this... I managed to somehow finish this:

Hello, happy green polka-dotted flowery pillow!

I'm kind of a little obsessed with yellow, green, and orange, and I go a little nuts over polka dots, so this definitely brought all of my happy things together.  It's almost like I don't even care that I currently don't have a working car!  Almost.

The pillow has a yellow binding around it, and I chose different shades of yellow and orange for the different flowers:

So yes, life is a bit stressful right now (I forgot a jacket on the way to work yesterday and almost burst out crying, that's how stressed I am!), but at least I feel a little bit accomplished in something.

On a related note... if I come home and something has happened to this pillow, I think I'll completely lose it. :P

at last

Why is it that when you're redecorating or upgrading something, it always has to look worse before it looks better?  My room currently looks like a tornado blew through it (or at least, I'm guessing it would look like this.  Not too many tornadoes in California. :P), and making my room better seems like a lost cause.  But fear not, I will keep fighting... because what else am I going to do?  Leave it looking like this? :P

It feels like I have been working on this "doggie quilt" forever {meaning over a week. I'm impatient. :)}... but I finally managed to finish it this past weekend.  Success!  I only had the binding to do, but I was dreading actually doing it (not sure why now, since it seems like it took the least amount of time. Oh Mindy... you are such a silly thing.)

yay!

It's a strip quilt, so it was honestly the easiest thing I could do.  I love the light blue fabric with the dog prints on it, and the white polka dot fabric was a last-minute purchase when I thought the quilt was lacking something. :)

But wait... that's not the only thing I finished this week!  I also made myself some lovely rolled paper flowers using the tutorial from jones design company (they are different shades of yellow/orange/peach, and will make a lovely addition to my new shelves... once I install the shelves that are currently lying on my bed).

terrible photo... hopefully I can snap a better one once it's on the shelf.

And I even sewed myself a cute little envelope pillow following the tutorial from feeling lovesome.  I appliqued a little tree and owl on it, and although it's not the best (I'm still quite a novice at the art of applique), I love how it turned out. :)

a little closeup of the owl so you can see he's smiling! :)

I will be making many more pillows in the following weeks, but for now I'm putting all of my energy into Valentines Day crafts.  Only a week left! Why is it that I always come up with these wonderful Valentines plans, and they always take triple the time I had planned to finish them?  :P

office daze

About a year ago while I was cleaning out some of the desks in our office, I discovered a package of construction paper.  It's almost sad how excited I got over this discovery.  Since then, I've been using it for various "projects" and decorations for different occasions.  It's always kind of a fun challenge to see what things I can make with just the supplies we have here.  

Every now and then, I'll whip up something quick while I'm waiting for documents to load or when I'm on hold during a call.  It's never anything spectacular, but it keeps me busy, and keeps me happy. :)

Today I got a small jump start on valentine's day decorations by making a small banner.  Unfortunately, one of the tools we don't have (but always need) is a ruler, so I always have to cut things by freehand.

And since you can't tell what the heck that is from far away, here it is a bit closer:

Just a quick "happy valentines day" banner using red and white paper and some string we had left over.

But my favorite part is what I did with the scraps of red and white paper I had:

One of the perks of having your girlfriend working at the same office is that she makes you pretty things :).  I love that you can see his reflection in the framed photo of us.  And I love how the flowers came out.  Better than I thought they would, especially considering I only had a glue stick to work with (note to self... keep hot glue gun in purse at all times!)

[sorry for the terrible photos.  I don't bring my camera to work, so I improvised with my phone.... it goes along with the whole use-what-you-can-find-in-the-office theme, I guess. ;) ]