Try It Out Thursday : Lutradur Rose

One of the things about lutradur, and other spunbonded fabrics, is that they don't have a bias edge, as they are not woven.  You use the bias edge in wovens to make shaped things like silk flowers, because it is stretchy.  That made me wonder about whether I could use lutradur to make flowers with.  So... I took a piece of florists wrap, which had little pieces of glitz on it, and coloured it lilac using transfer dyes.  I then cut a strip roughly 4" wide, and folded one short edge in on itself, and fused it down (see below).  You could do this with both edges, but it's not really necessary.

I then folded the whole strip in half across the width, and stitched along the bottom, using a doubled thread.  As you can see from the image, the stitches are fairly regular, but not the same; this gives a more random look to the finished flower. It does help if they're in a straight line, but as usual, I'm incapable of keeping anything straight <g>.

You can gather up the cloth as you go, or leave it until all the stitching is done, it doesn't really matter, but make sure you gather it all up as you want it before you finish stitching, using a double back stitch to secure it.  Incidentally, I've used dark blue thread here so that you can see what's going on; you would normally use thread that matches the cloth, so that it can't be seen.

Now, start with the end which you fused down, and roll it up tightly to create the centre of the flower.

Keep rolling, to make a flower head.

To finish it off, wrap the bottom end of the flower with thread, or take a few stitches through it.  If you want to give your rose a stem, then use florists wire to do this, and then tape it with green florists tape.  I'm using mine on a hat, so I'm not wiring it.

To finish it off, you can stitch the other end down using small stitches; I'm going to have mine lying on its side, so you won't see the unfinished end.  Note that lutradur doesn't fray, so you don't need to worry about it coming apart.  And there's my finished flower!

Try It Out Tuesday : Lace Flowers.

I showed you how to make Lutradur Lace in a previous post.  I made a little piece recently using florists wrap, just to see how it worked (very nicely), but it wasn't really big enough to do anything with.  So I thought I'd make a flower as an embellishment for a hat (possibly).

Take your piece of lace, and fold it in half.

Pick it up in both hands, one on either side of the lace scrap, with the fold at the bottom.  Gently push the sides together, as if you were trying to make a tuck or a pleat in the centre, and then play with the resulting shape until you something that looks flower like.

I thought this was quite sparse, so I added a smaller, second piece of lutradur lace around the flower shape, to flesh it out a bit. 

When I had a shape I liked (I think it's a sort of freestyle frilly carnation...).  I took a secure grip of the bottom with the fingers of one hand, and tied it together with a piece of cord.  If you wanted to make a proper stem for it, use wire instead of cord, and tape the wire, using florists tape. 

And here's the end result...

I think it's quite nice... why not try it out?  It took me about ten minutes to make, and would look good on a headband or hat, or, for that matter, an embroidery...

Try It Out Thursday : Making Embellishments

This is a quick and easy follow up to Tuesday's post.  I said I wanted to do something with the third flower I had cut out; so I made a freestanding flower with a little bit of glitz.  I took some angelina fibres and ironed them together to make 'cloth', and put that on top of a piece of heavyweight Lutradur.  I didn't have any XL to hand, so used Lutradur 100, it was fine.  I then put the last of the flowers on top of the angelina, making a three layered sandwich.  Then, covering it with greaseproof paper, I ironed all three layers together.  The layer of fusible already on the flower was enough to hold all three layers together, as the angelina is very fine.  If you wish, you could add stitch round the edges as we did with the bag.  I'm intending to punch a hole through one of the petals, to hang it on a piece of ribbon, which I will tie round the handles of the bag.  Try it out with a bit of scrap; you can make embellishments for mobile phones, key fobs, anything you like, using this incredibly simple technique.

Have fun!

Try It Out Thursday : Keeping It Simple.

It is possible to buy spunbonded materials which are similar to lutradur in construction; one type of such material is known, here at least, as florists wrap.  It comes in a wide variety of colours, and may even be patterned; I have on which has the names of European capital cities in black on a white background, ideal for journalling. The temptation is to use them as they come, but remember you can always add to them using transfer paints or other media.  The image above shows a piece of orange florists wrap which I have printed some flowers onto in red.  I think it's really effective; it's simple, but striking.  It would be better, of course, if I had remembered that florists wrap is not as heat resistant as lutradur... the pattern was not transferring, so I turned up the heat a bit...only to melt the fabric onto the paper in one place.  Oops...

To try this, just take a piece of typing paper, and doodle flower shapes all over it with transfer paint or transfer crayons.  Leave it to dry, then iron it onto your florists wrap, or onto lutradur.  It would be fun to put something underneath it, but I have designs on those little flowers... which we'll look at next week.