Tulle flower tutorial...

Due to popular demand here is the tute for the tulle flower brooch...
Get all your bits together...
You will need:


Tulle - I used black and a sort of beige colour. (its what I had in the stash!)
Needle and thread.
Templates, one slightly bigger than the other - mine are very high tech, jam jar lids!
Scissors - stating the obvious here.
Brooch Back or safety pin.


Cut out 8 of each colour, or if you are doing one colour 16 in the larger circle. Mine were as rough as guts, but tulle is very forgiving.
Cut out 8 of the smaller size.








For each petal use 2 large circles together and fold in half. Mine were one black circle and one beige one. Now layer them like this and starting at the back make a stitch through all layers to secure.



Keep doing this until you have 4 sides secured. (If you can have four sides to a circle?)



Now take your next 8 double layers circles. (We are still on the big circles here folks). Fold in half and in half again, so you have a quarter.
Do the same as before so that you are securing each quarter...

See?




Take your smaller circles and fold into quarters, and secure on top of the others. For the top I did a double layer of the lighter colour, not with the black in it at all.



Sew on your brooch back, or safety pin. I sort of separate the layers so it looks a bit more "fluffed up". You could also sew in a cute button or diamante in the centre, but I wanted mine quite plain.



...and there you have a tulle flower brooch!

I really hope this helps, and would love to see how much better you can do than my slightly sad attempt!!

Tweaking the Bookmark an update on the tutorial

I did that wee tutorial a couple of posts back, but have tweaked it a bit. However I think I might be getting a bit sick of bookmarks. What about you? Yeah don't blame ya either! Anyway take a gander ...

Fold those ends in like before, but instead of folding in half longways, just press the edges into the middle.

See?

Chuck your ribbon on top, like before, and tuck into the ends.

Now sew your ribbon on. I gave up on the pins because I was getting fed up with them, and they kept warping the ribbon and fabric.

The close up arty shot


Roll credits

THE END

Fabric bookmark tutorial

I have been using things like old shopping dockets, or in one instance a toothpick (unused!) for a bookmark. Not ideal really. Especially the toothpick thing, because Iv'e nearly lost an eye a couple of times.
So I figured ... no bookmark and lots of fabric ...

Anyway getting on with it...

Here's what you'll need

Fabric

Iron on fusible interfacing

Ribbon

Buttons or some other embellishment.

Cut your fabric to approximately 42cm x 6cm

(That's about 16" x 2 1/2" in old money!)

Iron on your interfacing, and then turn edges under by about 1/2 cm (1/4").

I find pressing it helps.

and here we are, nice and pressed

Fold your fabric in half longways, trying to match up your sides.

Press. (I'm big on that, because it holds it all together)

Press those two ends in and clip them inwards. So they don't stick out when you sew it up (Sorry about sounding so technical : )

Tuck your ribbon between the two ends, and pin in place.

You could leave strips of ribbon sort of dangling out instead of a little loop if you like. I like the little loop because I can relate to being a bit loopy, and its something to idly twirl around my finger when I'm lost in a darn good chapter.

Here's the famous sewing machine shot. Oh yeah I nearly forgot... sew all around the outside of your now almost completed bookmark. Once you have done that you can sew on some buttons or a bit of a bow or something, and in my book (scuse the pun) it looks like a pretty nice bookmark. I thought perhaps of sewing the buttons on first, because it was tricky trying to not show the thread at the back where the buttons are sewn on, but they would get in the way of the presser foot, depending on where you sew them of course.

I hope you are able to follow my little tutorial. I have a knack of being able to make something really simple sound awfully complicated, so apologies in advance if you think this tutorial is a bit rubbish!!!
Anyhoo, I'm off for a cup of tea and a wee read now ...