Saturday, November 10, 2012

The (Short) Tale of the Last Minute Pansy

This is by far the most theatrical thing I've made in a very, very long time, but heck it sure was fun!  I really wish I had occasion to make more pansy hats, as I have some ideas on how to improve the method.


Basically, what I did was this:  (And by "I", I mean, directed Melia and Holly on what to cut out, while I sewed button holes and sniffled through a head cold)


Cut 2 large petal shapes of one shade of purple
Cut 1 large petal shape of another shade of purple
Cut 2 small petal shapes of yet another shade of purple


The pieces look like this:

 The pieces, when assembled, should look somewhat like this:

I zig-zagged down the center, attaching all the pieces, like so:
I put some hot glue in the center and shaped the flower.  After that dried, I put a drop of hot glue in the center of the yellow circle, and squished it all together, and then glued that in the middle of the flower.

A couple of things I would do differently if I ever have the occasion to do felt pansies again: 
-Take the time to stitch the petal shaping, rather than using hot glue (hot glue works, but it's messy, and not quite as exact as I would like)
-Make the yellow center just a teeny touch bigger
-Potentially do more shading on the petals, either with embroidery, markers, or layers of different colored felt layered.

To make the hat, I glued each flower facing outwards on the outer edge of a fascinator blank, making kind of a 'top hat' shape out of the natural shape of the flowers.  I stuffed some green green netting in some empty spaces, and filled in the center of the fascinator with some more of the flowers.  As a last-second addition, I threw some green tulle as a veil at the back.  (Which totally makes the whole thing, IMHO!)



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