Miniature Millinery

Scale is a marvelous teacher.  And roses don't grow overnight.

Back when I left off with Mrs. Rose, I had figured out a method for making miniature roses.

Before those roses can become rose boughs, I need to figure out how to craft the leaves.

My vision was to have three different types of leaves:  a stumpwork version (yet to be made), a beaded version (yet to be made) and a miniature velvet-ish/fabric-y version á la a millinery leaf spray like the ones below.

As you can see those haven't yet been made either but at least I'm further along than I was yesterday.



The smallest pre-manufactured millinery leaf I own is about 7/8".  My leaves need to be about 3/8" to 1/2" or 11mm-15mm.  I'm playing with all types of variables: wiring the leaves using super micro wire, managing the fraying of the fabric that I'm using, sewing on such tiny pieces, and holding the dag-blasted $@#!%! things in my fat fingers.

There was a lot of struggle today but I have at least discovered two ways I won't be making the leaves.

That being said, I can begin to see that I will figure it out and it's going to be lovely.  It's just not going to be quick.

Back to the drawl-ing board.

Happy weekend everyone!

A Palette of Petals

Rain drops and snow drops...

And snow...

The last of the season?  It must be.  

But Spring is doing her best to stay on schedule and push out the petals...

Even if she has to shake a little snow off her shoulders.

I've taken a page from her book and have been pushing out petals too.

A whole palette of rose petals for Mrs. Rose's block...

Inner and outer petals in four different sizes...

And in many shades of pink...

That way I have a palette of sizes, shapes and colors to choose from when I start sewing them into branches, sprigs and canes.

Now I need a similar palette of leaves.  Since I don't have the right ribbon for them in my stash, I've had to place an order and am waiting for the mailman.

In the meantime, I'm working on some Japanese embroidery.

Happy Monday.

Painting, Petaling and Pairing Up

Where's the  Green?

Maybe it was the ten inches of snow that fell last night that kept the leprechauns away.

I looked out in the snow this morning expecting to see their little green tracks but there was nothing.  Nothing but white.

Jack had yet another snow day which makes it a record for his senior year.  Even Jim has to work from home today.  And the only sign that it's St. Patrick's day around here is the smell of corned beef and cabbage in the crock pot.

I wasn't even working with green paints.  Today it was all about petal pink and playing around with silk paint.

I'm painting dye-able silk ribbon for my petals.  I bought both the dyes and the roll of undyed ribbon from Dharma trading.

I was playing around with a bit of gray in the ribbons...hoping that when I make up the roses, it will appear as if the pink colors grow out of the gray walls...as if by magic. 

I'm not sure I'll know my answer until I make the roses themselves.

Whenever I make separate components that I add to a piece, I usually make lots  more than I'll use.  That way I have choices when it comes to creating the final composition.

The left overs are stored in a clear divided container...shells, twigs, rocks, etc...It's a nice little go-to box for embellishments.  Little bits from all my prior pieces.

While I was painting, I was paying close attention to the drama playing out at the backyard bird feeders.      Lately, hundreds of grackles have descended on the bird feeders as they pass through on their spring migration.  They make quite a racket and are a spectacle all to themselves.  I usually let them feed for a good while before I slam the door to chase them away.  This signals the little birds to all come back to the feeder...which they do.  They get about 10-15 mins of feeding in before the mob scene returns.

I can tell that Spring is almost around the corner because the birdsong is everywhere and birds are starting to pair up.

Enter this couple that showed up this morning...

Guess what grackles??  The really big boys are in town...the Red-Shouldered Hawk versions of Bonnie and Clyde.

Needless to say, there's been a bit of carnage in the backyard today as they sit sentinel...

Perhaps it's a bit more apropos for Halloween than for St. Patrick's Day but I thought all the black feathers against the white snow looked kind of pretty...

And this pic actually looks like feathers have been tossed in the air versus scattered on the snow.

It's kind of pretty if you don't think of its morbid origins.

For the next few days I'll be working on some Japanese embroidery.

Have a great St. Pat's day everyone and send some green my way, will you??

Flower Field Trip

With snow in the forecast yet, those of us in the Northern hemisphere are longing for the beauty and warmth of Spring.

Since we're not getting it this week, I thought we'd take a virtual Flower Field Trip.

I missed the Philadelphia Flower Show so instead, I'm taking you to the Garment District of NYC to the home of M & S Schmalberg.

This field trip is courtesy of Allie Aller who took us there in April of 2011...

We were introduced to the owner Warren Brand and his son, Adam, who took us on full tour of the flower-making operations.

The company is fourth-generation,  family-owned and it shows in the personal, warm service that we received. 

I can see why Allie had been working with them for the past few years.  On this trip, she brought Warren a copy of her first book which she autographed and left with him...

Here's how it works.  You can choose fabric from their huge selection of silks, velvets, organzas, etc... or you can provide your own fabric.

Then a flower type and size is chosen from the hundreds of dies that are available...

Here are some of the smallest options that are available...



The dies are then placed on top of many layers of the fabric and cut out by using a large press...



Once the petals are cut out...

They head to another machine where they are put into a mold and pressed into shape...

After shaping, they head to the folks who assemble the petals into finished flowers...

What a job title...Flower Maker.



The flowers are all hung by their stems upside down on wire until the glue dries...

They are the prettiest rows ever.

The flowers are then placed in boxes to either be shipped out...

Or to be placed on the shelves...

Where beautiful people like Cathy Kizerian can shop to their heart's content...

We all had fun gathering flowers and planning our "gardens".  Allie uses hers in the quilts she makes and the classes she teaches...

If this all sounds like too much fun...you're in luck.  Allie will be teaching a class as part of the Quilt Alliance's Quilters Take Manhattan Event called Composite Flower Motifs at The City Quilter in NYC on Friday, September 19 from 1:00pm-4:00pm which includes a field trip to M & S Schmalberg.

Allie will also be participating in a Quilters Design Mash-up at the Event where, in an iron-chef-style smack down, designers will have fabrics thrown at them and only one hour to design a quilt top on a design wall.  I would LOVE to see that.  

If you can't make it to NYC for the Quilt Alliance event or to visit Schmalberg in person, you can always send them an email or call with special requests.

If you enjoy Allie and her work, her second book, Quilting: Just a Little Bit Crazy is coming out in May, details are here...AND she's on QNNTV teaching 3-D Fower Embellishments...details here.  

I hope you enjoyed my flower field trip today and that it gives you a bright start to your weekend.  

Happy day.

A Rosy Start

Last night Jim and I opened a bottle of wine and had a little rose celebration in my house. 

You see, you guys don't know it but I've been dreaming and planning and gathering materials with the hopes that one day I could try to make miniature millinery flowers...

And yesterday the stars aligned, the materials were all present and my little mini roses worked!!

I have a bit of tweeking to do of course but generally I believe the method is possible and a great beginning to my rose bower on Mrs. Rose's block.

I borrowed concepts from traditional millinery flower making books.  The first I found was from Lacis and was printed in 1984.  The methods were for large scale flowers but I felt like I could translate them if I could just figure out the tools.   

I tried with using a very thin interfacing for making flowers when I made these Alstroemeria for my Daughter's Valentine piece, when I made these poinsettias, and when I made these Black-eyed Susans for our motif swap at the Crazy Adventure in Connecticut.  These methods worked OK but the interfacing added bulk to the flower and interfered with the petals holding their shape over time.

Then in April 2011, Allie took us on a field trip to M&S Schmalberg, a milliner in the garment district in NYC.  They have beautiful flowers...it makes you happy just to go there and it's cheaper than therapy!

Here's Allie standing below the banner quilt that she made for them because she loves them so much.

At Schmalberg, I learned how traditional millinery flowers were made.   Allie uses many of them in her award-winning quilts so I purchased a few organza petals which I used in my Breakfast at Tiffany's block and in the cherry blossoms on my Hearts and Hands for Sendai block.  They worked great, the only constraint being that the smallest flower I could purchase from them was one inch large.  I can't believe I'm saying one inch is large but in some scenarios, it is!

These little guys I made yesterday range from 3/8" to 1/2" and I think smaller is even possible.

My trip to Schmalberg gave me insight into millinery flower production which I was able to tuck away for future reference.

Future reference ended up being yesterday.

I roughed up a petal pattern in three different sizes using the three different silk paint samples from yesterday.  I cut them out and then used an iron and heated various small tools I had to shape the petals.

I couldn't believe how well it worked.  

Increasingly I've been working in three dimensions and felt somewhat constrained by stumpwork and ribbon embroidery methods.  Though I still love both, they have their limitations in scale and design.

Painting my own silk will allow me a lot more flexibility in color choices and sculpting the silk will allow me to make flowers in multiple shapes and sizes to better reflect what occurs in nature. 

I still have many more hurdles that I haven't figured out...for instance, those roses need sepals and stems...and I haven't figured out how I'm going to do the rosebush canes, how to do thorns, leaves, etc.

But it's a beginning.  And a pretty rosy one at that.  

Happy Spring.

Bower Beginnings

Finally, life is settling a bit, the monkeys have left my back and I'm ready to work again with Mrs. Rose.

It's been too long.

I've take some time to re-acquaint and mock up a quick outline sketch of where I need to go next.  I'm planning to make a rose bower on the block...

A climbing rose that clings to the wall and that has three-dimensions so that it hangs out over the mirror and Mrs. Rose.

A bower provides shelter and protection in garden.  Not normally in a nursing home...the bower signifies how the gift of Mrs. Rose transformed her environment from a cold, stark nursing facility into a beautiful, sheltering space.

I've thought about which techniques might work and I've decided to mock up two different scenarios.  One is a modified stumpwork scenario and the other is an attempt at miniature millinery.

I'm going to give the mini millinery a try first. 

Since the scale of the roses are 1/2" or so...I'm not quite sure I can make it work.  Same is true for the stumpwork idea.  The smallest stumpwork flowers I've ever made were about 1".

So let the experimenting begin.    

First thing I want to do is figure out which paint works best on the silk.  So far, I'm liking the Setasilk the most but I'm going to reserve judgement until I actually work the silk into flowers.  

I'm not worried about color just yet.  Just trying to figure out which paint/silk combination will handle the best.

Off to keep working.  I'll let you know what happens next time.   

Full Bloom

With the addition of those extra 10 petals, my blooms have finally finished puberty and filled out.

It takes a long time to secure all of those petals to the back of the piece and, at final count, I made 25 of them!!

Holy Smokes. If I had told myself at the beginning of this project that I would be making 25 individual lace petals...I would have thought I was crazy. Good thing I was able to keep myself in the dark.

And treat-of-treats, I finally got to start adding some of the pearls and gemstones.

I usually make myself wait for the "good part" -- which to me is the beading details that make the whole bouquet come alive but...

I've decided to finish out this top right corner lace bouquet completely before moving on...

Just a little reward for myself for making it through all those $!@blasted*&!...I mean...beautiful petals.

So today I'm working on the rest of the lace bouquet, the leaves and the secondary flowers.

Now, that's a good day. Hope yours is too.

Lacy Petals

Yesterday I finished stitching the 15th lacy stumpwork petal for my Breakfast at Tiffany's block.

As I was stitching the petals, I was worried that the couched wire outlining the petals was going to be too strong compared to the laciness of the petal...

Overall, I think they'll be great and the delicacy of the lace of the petal really comes through which I'm happy about.

One thing I did notice was that I need a much more precise pair of scissors...like these used for hardanger...in order to clip all those threads super close. A macro lens is good for pointing that stuff out.

So...as the Mad Hatter said in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland after the Red Queen had imprisoned and forced him to become her personal Hatter...

"It's good to be working at my trade again."

If you're wondering what my Breakfast at Tiffany's project is...you can read prior posts on the topic here and the originating post describing the inspiration behind the block here.

Happy weekend everyone!

P.S. We are preparing for Hurricane Irene. Though our house is up high on a hill, our little historic mill town of Ellicott City is situated right on the Patapsco River. It flooded in 1972 during Hurricane Agnes so keep your fingers crossed for us this weekend that this doesn't happen again...(that's the second floor of the building showing above the flood)