Believe in the Power of Beautiful Stuff

One of my many, many Christmas presents this yet (I’m very spoiled) was this book called “Kanzashi in Bloom: 20 Simple Fold-and-Sew Projects to Wear and Give” by Diane Gilleland. I was thrilled as I’ve had my eye on it for months now and none of my local bookstores carried it. So frustrating!

Once I got my paws on it though, I went crazy!

Kanzashi are made by simply folding squares of fabric to create petals and then assembling those petals to make a flower. Traditional Kanzashi are made from silk and are much more elaborate than these. Do a Google image search to see some more traditional Kanzashi and if you’re interested in creating these, I highly suggest you get Diane’s book. The directions were very clear and her writing style is like a friend sitting next to you. Love it!

Here is the first one I made out of orange cotton and embellished with a vintage button.

The next few were all about perfecting the technique and having fun with colors and buttons.

Pink with a big silver bubble button.

This is made from a brown and blue batik fabric that you might recognize from a previous post, it’s the back of the quilt I just finished!

This one looks like it has a wonky petal, I just didn’t adjust it before the photo shoot. This one is also the tiniest as it’s an inch and a half!

I’m mixing up petal styles here, also look for the tiny seed bead stamen.

Here, I sandwiched the petals to make things more interesting.

Then I got super crazy by sandwiching petals and added beaded stamen.

And now for my final flower this evening which included a technique that I’ll be talking about more very soon. This is a linen flower where I airbrushed the fabric with my new Color Artz airbrushing kit before folding. The airbrushing deserves its own post and it will get one.

Now that I have all these beautiful flowers, I’m going to put them on everything! What would you adorn with them?