A couple of weekends ago I went up to London with some girlfriends. We meet in the pub once a month and get crafty – and as several of us have birthdays within a few weeks of each other, we thought it would be a great idea to get our craft on and start our birthday celebrations in style. It was great to be child free and carefree for the day!
I don’t get up to London very much anymore, so it was quite a thrill being on the high-speed train. The organised among us provided orange juice and warm (yes, warm) croissants for the journey. It was a lovely spring day, but ironically we were going to spend it indoors at the Country Living Spring Fair. Over the years I’ve been to quite a few of these spring (and Christmas) fairs. They don’t disappoint.
All of us were keen to have a go at the free craft sessions on offer. I learnt how to make paper flowers, and in the queue for tickets exchanged notes with a couple of ladies who were looking for ideas to share with their WI. They’d stitched felt hearts to make a wall hanging.
My piece de resistance was a ribbon rose made at a workshop with Jane Means – such a great way of using up your ribbon scraps – just sew them together into a long snake and get stitching! Jane has some detailed instructions on how to make a variety of ribbon roses on her website, so do check it out.
This is how I made mine
- Stitch two lengths of ribbon together at their short ends. Jane gave use a short yellow ribbon (for the centre of our flowers) and a longer length of blue
- Roll the end of the yellow ribbon round to form a tiny cylinder and stitch to hold it in place – this is the centre of your flower
- Without cutting your thread sew a running stitch close to the bottom edge of the ribbon about 5cm long. Gather it up and shape it around the centre of your flower and stitch in place
- Repeat step 3 – running stitch, gather and stitch in place. For a wider/more open flower I’d suggest stitching the gathers in place so they lie halfway up the ribbon that has already been stitched in place
- Finish off the untidy workings at the back by sewing on a patch of felt. Attach to a safety pin and there you have it!
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Until next time, happy flowers!
