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Felt flowermaking experiment
Jul. 10th, 2013 08:16 amSo, I have written a few posts this summer about the collection of millinery designs i created for retailing at the pop-up boutique School for Style in Williamstown, MA (which now has a Facebook page)--fascinators and straw hats.
The fascinators have been selling really well, so I started thinking about what i might do if the pop-up continues into fall/winter, when felt comes into play. I thought i might give a stab at some felt flowers, make up some prototypes and see if that'd be a viable new style. I really love the felt dahlias that Lillibet's Millinery does, so that was my first style to try out and see if i could put my own spin on it.
There are, in fact, loads of tutorials out there on how to make felt dahlias for "craftsy" purposes, apparently often used as a corsage pin, so i started out by reading several of them and looking at the different variations in how people cut their petal shapes and how they pinched them to create dimension (the two links show two different methods).
I also knew that i was going to make one major change in the methods described in every tutorial i read--they all rely 100% on glue to assemble the flower, and i'm generally opposed to structural reliance on adhesives in fine millinery. I won't say there isn't a place for glues at all, but glue adds weight and clumsiness, and fine millinery is never weighty or clumsy, IMO. Hand-stitching gives the milliner much more control over accurate placement of an element, and is easily reversible or removable.
While it is probably fine to glue all the petals onto a base for a corsage one intends to wear once or twice pinned to a dress or bag, a hat is meant to be worn more often and more prominently--hi, it's on your HEAD--so i wanted to employ as much stitching as possible. I don't trust glue--if it's not heavy and gloppy, it often fails in the worst ways, and i don't want my name on a felt flower that sheds its petals one by one!
In making a style for retailing, i make it at least twice in order to get an accurate idea of the time spent to create it (the first time is always longer than every subsequent time, and you often refine the method between the first and second iteration) and the quantity of materials needed. I also had a friend who had expressed an interest in a felt dahlia fascinator, so i offered to make one of my prototypes according to her specs and if she liked how it turned out, she could buy it.
( Read more... )
The fascinators have been selling really well, so I started thinking about what i might do if the pop-up continues into fall/winter, when felt comes into play. I thought i might give a stab at some felt flowers, make up some prototypes and see if that'd be a viable new style. I really love the felt dahlias that Lillibet's Millinery does, so that was my first style to try out and see if i could put my own spin on it.
There are, in fact, loads of tutorials out there on how to make felt dahlias for "craftsy" purposes, apparently often used as a corsage pin, so i started out by reading several of them and looking at the different variations in how people cut their petal shapes and how they pinched them to create dimension (the two links show two different methods).
I also knew that i was going to make one major change in the methods described in every tutorial i read--they all rely 100% on glue to assemble the flower, and i'm generally opposed to structural reliance on adhesives in fine millinery. I won't say there isn't a place for glues at all, but glue adds weight and clumsiness, and fine millinery is never weighty or clumsy, IMO. Hand-stitching gives the milliner much more control over accurate placement of an element, and is easily reversible or removable.
While it is probably fine to glue all the petals onto a base for a corsage one intends to wear once or twice pinned to a dress or bag, a hat is meant to be worn more often and more prominently--hi, it's on your HEAD--so i wanted to employ as much stitching as possible. I don't trust glue--if it's not heavy and gloppy, it often fails in the worst ways, and i don't want my name on a felt flower that sheds its petals one by one!
In making a style for retailing, i make it at least twice in order to get an accurate idea of the time spent to create it (the first time is always longer than every subsequent time, and you often refine the method between the first and second iteration) and the quantity of materials needed. I also had a friend who had expressed an interest in a felt dahlia fascinator, so i offered to make one of my prototypes according to her specs and if she liked how it turned out, she could buy it.
( Read more... )
