Floral Design Day 4

Last night was our final day of floral design. We got a certificate and a really pretty calla lily to take home, but more importantly we made...the tower.

The tower is a tall glass vase (white so that you can't tell the stems are sticking into a brick of styrofoam) with a ball of stuff on top. First, we start with the greens (above). Then we just stick flowers all over it until it's time to stop.

I find that silk flowers actually look better outside. Here's a picture of them in natural light:

These things cost $50 apiece if you buy them from my instructor. It is $15 worth of materials and about 15 minutes worth of work, tops.
Overall it was a good class, but again, you will not be seeing most of what we learned at my wedding :)

Blankets

Last week I decided to use some scraps to make a few blankets that I thought could be useful for picnics in the park or perhaps seating for friends with little kids during our wedding (which will also be in the park). We had two blankets when Zac and I were little called the "zoo blankets" because I guess they had zoo animals on them. Anyway, they had canvas backing and were perfect for sitting on the ground.

I wanted to do 3" squares that would be randomly chosen and pieced together. Once I got out all of my fabrics, I found that I have a lot of green/blue and a lot of yellow/pink but not many reds and not many solids, so I modified my randomness scheme to attempt to put every square next to at least one coordinating fabric. I also started doing a little bit of strip piecing to make the process more efficient. Here's what I have so far:

I decided to make each strip 30 squares long, which means I have 4 done and 26 to go!

If anybody has fabric scraps that they are not using or can spare a 3" strip of, please send them to me. I'm running out of scraps and my natural tendency to hoard may stop this project in its tracks.

Thanks in advance for any fabric donations!

Floral Design: Day 3

Last night was the third and penultimate floral design class and was another exercise in silk flowers. We made sort-of-cascading bouquets in these weird angled plastic holders that made me quadrouply sure that I will do a "normal" hand-tied bouquet of live flowers for my wedding.

The good news is that the teacher liked my composition and didn't adjust it much besides pulling the flowers out a little bit because I tend to shove as many blooms into a small space as possible and it looks better if you just give them some space.

The teacher told us about one bride for whom she made a bouquet of white roses that cascaded down so that it was only 2 inches from the floor. I will add this to the list of floral elements that you are allowed to slap me for if you see them anywhere near me.

next week: reception centerpieces and "the tower". I still don't know exactly what the tower is, but I'll let you know when I find out!

Floral Design: Day 2

Last night was my second day of Floral Design: Weddings start to finish. We did bouquets. First, we made what I consider a normal bouquet, but it was made of silk flowers. It really doesn't look bad. When Brian saw it he said "Bam. Flowers are done." I don't love it that much, but I'm glad I have an idea of what to do with real flowers for a simple bouquet.

Next, we made a bouquet of real flowers using a bouquet holder. The holder is a sphere of floral foam encased in a grid of plastic and with a plastic handle. It allows you to make a round bouquet if that's what you're into.

This isn't really my cup of tea. Some of the flowers in this ball thing are actually really pretty. The greens are nice and the daisy button poms (I have no idea if that's the real name, but that's what my teacher calls them) are pretty. I brought the few leftover flowers home and made an arrangement that is more me:

Better

I destroyed my epic fail dress and turned the ruffle into the waistband of a skirt. It's not completely done yet because it is a little too big in the waist and I'd like it to be snug so that my mediocre hem job is less noticeable--see how it's sagging in the front a little bit? This second picture shows the skirt better and the asterisks mark evidence that it's still too big. I had to lead with the other picture, though, because it shows 1) how silly I feel taking my own picture for a blog, and 2) my pile of random fabric on the ironing board. More on that project later.

BIG elephant quilt!

This is the quilt I made for Kelly and Marc's baby, Alex. I first saw this quilt on the blog house on hill road and thought I could duplicate it. Then a couple weeks ago I was browsing the craft books at the local bookstore, and I saw the pattern for it in the book Quilts, Baby! So I bought the book. I only had two weeks to make a quilt before going down to LA to see Alex and I thought this would be easy. The pattern was really nothing more than I got off the blog - just the outline of the elephant to enlarge, and general instructions. The applique is fused on, and handling that large of an applique is more challenging than I thought. I drafted the pattern directly onto the paper side of the fusible webbing, and had to tape two pieces together to get it big enough. It's hard to tell from the picture how big it is, but the quilt overall is 38 x 54, so that's one big elephant applique!

Once I started playing around with fabrics, I found I liked this color scheme of gray, blue, black, and green, and pulled some fabrics that I had to use. Who would have thought of using gray for baby quilt? The quilt back was part of the pattern in the book, and the fabric is a Denyse Schmidt fabric I found on sale at Peapod Fabrics. I thought I was being really clever to incorporate the quilt label into the strip on the back, then realized that the quilting lines criss-crossed it. It's OK, though. There's another similar quilt by this same designer, Erin Harris, that is a giraffe. Maybe I'll try it for the next baby!

Floral Design Day 1

As you all know (I think), I'm getting married next year. While I hope that my portion of this blog doesn't turn into weddings, weddings, weddings, there are several projects that I want to do myself and I'll need the input of my crafty family, so you might have to put up with some wedding posts. First, I thought, "Hey, I bet I can do all the flowers for our wedding myself, with the help of some key aunts and cousins. This can't be hard." The next step was to enroll in a floral design class at Community College of Baltimore County. Last night was the first of 4 meetings and we learned about boutinniers. Our instructor is a proponent of fake flowers and rhinestones as well as flower balls, giant baskets, and many other things that are on the opposite side of the design spectrum from Martha Stewart. As you know, I tend to put myself closer to the Martha side. But I did learn some stuff.

Here are pictures of my creations from the first class. They are pretty silly.