Meet Molly

This is Molly. You may have remembered her from this post. I finished her last week at when I was at my friend Pat's house. I came home and looked at her and decided she looked like a Molly. I also decided that she definitely needed to have an outfit of some sort.

There always seems to be some dumb story or a major mistake with my projects. No different with Molly. You see, my sock monkey had to be a girl. When you make a sock monkey, there is an opening in the, um, crotch area for you to stuff your monkey with fiberfil. As I was constructing Molly, the knit in the sock ran like a nylon stocking. Yep, there was a run running right up her front . I had to stitch the run closed and that resulted in Molly having girly parts.

I have given the link to several people on how to make a little girl's tutu. Funny, I had yet to make one myself. Well, now was my time. You can find the instructions at Plum Tickled. The tutu went together quick which is always a good thing.

Hand Tied Peony Bouquet

With the peonies blooming, Whitney and I decided to get a little practice going to keep our floral skills up. There isn't much blooming in the yard right now, at least as far as bouquet flowers go. So I had peonies, hosta leaves and the blooms off of the spirea bushes.

The day before, Whitney asked if I wanted to go to the antique mall with her. What the heck for? She said that she wanted to look for something old for her wedding day. She has the something new, something borrowed and something blue but nothing old. She had a thought about putting a cameo on the bouquet. So that's what she wanted to find.We were all done cruising through the mall and I was ready to pay for my purchases. I can always find something! We spied a small cameo that was marked down to $5. Whitney had discussed using black ribbon on the bouquets. Her colors are Latte, pink and black. The little cameo isn't of great quality but it was cheap. We can keep looking but right now it works for what she wants it for.

Floral Design Class #6

Well, this was our last class. I think Whitney and I learned a lot (even though my pictures may not show it). On the agenda was to create a floral topiary and we were let loose to do anything we wanted to. Whitney and I brought containers and peacock feathers. We both tried to use the peacock feathers but they didn't fit in with any of the flowers that Ken brought for us that night. Sigh. He said that peacock feathers were very expensive. We told him that we didn't have to pay for them. We took them from Lauren's stash in the basement. She used the peacock feathers for her evening gown in her senior fashion show.

When we started the topiary, I didn't think that I would like it. Whitney and I and our other table mate really liked how they turned out. Our table mate has a son who is getting married on September 10th. She was going over to their place to show them her topiary. We all thought they would make great table decorations. My thoughts are to add one more stem of the alstroemeria (Persian Lily) to the top of the topiary to give it a fuller look. I would take away most of the flowers on the bottom but I would leave the flowers on one stem of alstroemeria. I think it would look nice with moss on the bottom but I think the moss is expensive. I didn't bring my ribbon up as high as I should have. I would also see if a satin ribbon works better in this arrangement.

Our last arrangement of the night was designer's choice. Whitney had mentioned that she wanted to use one of my silver pitchers. My sister Karen loves to rummage sale. I think I've gotten about 4 pitchers from her. I took a little silver polish to the pitcher before we went to class. I chose an old Haeger pedestal container.

As with so many projects, I panic before I get started. So I had to take a minute and try to think of what we did in past classes. I decided that I wanted to have some cascading action going on. When Ken came by, he said "this will be interesting with the little amount of flowers that you have. You'll have to think about it". Man, he sounded like Tim Gunn on Project Runway! I was determined that it would work for me. When I was finished and Ken came over to give his critique, we both differed on what we thought should be the front of the piece. My back was his front and vice versa. In the end, I think he liked the arrangement. We had a no-show student tonight so there were extra flowers. He went and grabbed one more flower and stuck it in the arrangement to bridge the lower flowers with the taller flowers.

Whitney decided that she didn't want to use all of her flowers. I think she had the same yellow tulips that I did and she didn't like the colors together. She did really well the past six weeks. Her memory is certainly better than mine. She was able to answer Ken's questions. I wasn't!

A couple of days ago, I was in the grocery store and there was a cart with roses and carnations marked down. The flowers weren't really the right size for corsages but I decided to buy them anyway. For nine dollars, I got 10 roses and 6 carnations. That was a decent price to spend to get some practice taping. There were tornado sirens going off in the area. I kind of headed that and went outside to clip some shrub branches to use as my greens. I clipped some lavender but I didn't clip enough so I gave that to Whitney. Like I said, the flowers really are too large but they served the purpose.

Floral Design Class #5

Here we go again, another funeral arrangement. This week, it is a casket spray. We used a flower container that curves and has little rubber pads under it so it can sit on the curve of a casket. I hope no one is eating breakfast right now. If you are, I apologize. I decided to go for a monochromatic theme. That would have been a good idea for a bridal bouquet but not so much for a casket. I pulled different pinks off of the flower table. This combination of flowers wouldn't pack much of a punch I don't think on top of a casket.

The second half of class was fun. We worked on boutonnieres and corsages. The boutonnieres are so easy. They really only take a few minutes to put together. The corsages went together pretty easy also. We actually did one boutonniere and two corsages in less than an hour and that included the instruction and questions. I hope I can remember all the important details when it's time to put together Whitney's flowers.

Floral Design Class #4

We are now over half way finished with our six week floral design class. This week's projects were a free-style bouquet and another funeral arrangement. The free style bouquet we used a bouquet holder. It allows the designer to "move" the flowers in different directions, for lack of a better description. After completing, you would need to use a floral glue to hold everything in place, especially the heavier flowers such as the roses. As interesting as this is, I still think I like the hand tied bouquets better.

Whitney and I weren't quite sure why we were doing another funeral arrangement. This is very similar to what we did earlier. The only difference is that this arrangement is an "L" shape.

Floral Design Class #3

I'm sure that my three hundreds of followers are possibly tired of the rookie floral designs. This blog was mostly developed to post sewing projects. But now and then, I veer off course. Only three weeks left, then hopefully more sewing posts.

This week's topics were hand-tied bouquets and cascading bouquets. Our instructor said all he used to design was cascading bouquets then along came Martha and she changed the flower industry. He said that he only does about 10% cascades now, the rest are hand-tieds. Whitney was in Houston this week visiting Joshua and her future home so she wasn't at class so you only get to see my designs.

The hand-tied was a little harder than expected. I think part of the problem is that we are working with fewer flowers that what I would want. My hand-tied I thought was slightly off balance. I think the tree ferns should have been throughout the bouquet and not just on the outside.

Ok, warning, minor rant ahead. There is someone in class that either doesn't know how

to count or Princess just doesn't care that she takes more flowers than what we are suppose to. It seems that there are a couple of vultures in class. They swoop down onto the flower tables before the instructor even tells us to and takes all the best flowers. I'm usually left with all the flowers that don't match. Princess's cascade bouquet was twice the size of mine. Grrrr. Can you take what is allotted for you please?

The flowers really wouldn't be my choice. I would use the spray roses only if I had tea roses in addition. The spray roses get somewhat lost because of their size. The carnations are overpowering I think. And obviously, I would not put yellow flowers with beige roses and red carnations in the cascade bouquet. The important thing is is that I'm learning how to do the techniques. I'm not using them so I'm not going to worry about the color combinations. I'm still confident that Whitney and I will be able to achieve the look she wants for her wedding.

Floral Class, Week 2

This week in class we worked on a parallel garden arrangement. This is an arrangement that is really only meant to be seen from one side. You would typically see this type of arrangement on an alter or at a funeral home. Since it's only seen from one side, you would be wasting money putting flowers on both sides of the arrangement.

What the instructor does for each arrangement is to write the "recipe" of the arrangement on the board. We go to the back of the room and pick out the "ingredients". Now, all we know is that we need three tulips or two fuji's, etc. At this point, we don't know what the arrangement will look like. There is usually at least three colors of each flower. We take that we think will work together. I wanted to do a red and yellow arrangement. He then shows us how we need to make our arrangement. You can see that the same colors are on the same side of the arrangement. Sometimes that gives you a striking look but I don't think it worked for this arrangement. It wasn't an intentional thing, just how his recipe and my color choices worked out. You can see that Whitney's arrangement is different because of her color choices.

Our second arrangement of the evening was a candle centerpiece. Whitney picked out white mums and I picked yellow. The white mums were larger but fewer of them on the stems than the yellow. Whitney's arrangement looks more balanced. Mine is very crowded. My flowers were smaller but there were quite a few more on the stems. The German in me wasn't going to throw them away so I kept adding them into my arrangement. Obviously, Whitney scored higher on her project. My arrangement is very crowded.

Competing for Space

I was only home from Italy for a few hours. I had come home sick and was extremely tired from the flight home. I had taken a nap and woke up to find my husband painting t-shirts. WTH? Taylor had purchased about 30 t-shirts for Calculus class. The kids were going to wear them on the last day of school as a joke to their teacher. Taylor had tie-dyed them and now needed to paint the graphics on them. She had to cut out all the stencils used for each t-shirt which was time consuming. She was running out of time so Jeff volunteered. I so wished I would have taken his picture. I can't think of a time when he connected with his feminine self and was crafting. I can see there will be some competition for space in my new sewing studio once completed. But I do have to say "What a Dad!" "What a guy!"