Finally finished flowers

Finally finished all my allocation of flowers. Some were easier than others to sew. The plain orange material was tough, it was almost as if it was repelling the needle! I was not the only flower sew-er to find this - I had to buy a thimble after piercing my thumb with the blunt end of my needle.

Garden Walk fabric flowers

Having had the prototype of the fabric flowers accepted by the Garden Walk committee, the next step was to choose some fabric. Lorraine and I went to Timaru to visit fabric shops. One of the fabric shops was having a closing down sale, where we found a lovely orange gingham. We bought what was left on the roll, which was just about 3 metres.
I then spent some time cutting up the fabric into suitably sized strips (9cm by 37cm) and ended up with 99 strips.

It was decided that we needed more than 99 flowers. Last year 120 tickets were sold, and so I went shopping again. Since we had been shopping last, the original shop had closed. I checked out the other 2 fabric shops and, surprisingly(!) couldn't find any matching gingham. I did find a plain orange cotton that matched the gingham perfectly and bought 3 metres. This was when I got some of the samples of fabric mentioned in a previous post. I cut the new material into same size strips ready to start sewing.

We were initially going to have the two flowers, orange and gingham. Lorraine and I decided that it might look good if we had some flower that had both fabrics in - this meant that I cut about half of the gingham and half the orange strips in half - still with me? and then sewed the gingham to the orange to create two-tone strips.

So now the plan is to have 4 flowers: gingham, orange, orange/gingham and gingham/orange!

The programme for the walk will be coordinated with the flowers. The sewing has been divided between some of the Garden Walk committee members, with each person getting about 34 strips. Certainly do-able even if some people openly admit they are not that proficient! I provided instructions and photos of each stage which I will link to soon.

Fabric Flowers

The Primary school here has an annual Garden Walk as a fund-raiser. This is held in spring, which, in these parts, is November time. There are a number of gardens in the area, all open for viewing for one day. Last year the tickets had a fabric flower with them, to be worn at the gardens to show that you had a ticket. These are the two we got last year:

Having offered to help and admitting my sewing tendencies, I was asked to look into a different style of fabric flower for the tickets, with the proviso that it had to be simple! There followed a happy morning researching the internet, checking out a few of the many how-to's out there and having a go at making a few. I wanted to keep the gathered look, but was open to ideas. I found a few that I liked, and had a play:

The clear winner was this one, getting the vote of approval from Husband and Garden Walk committee:

I used the instructions on here on Little Birdie Secrets.