At the Stampin' Up! Leadership Conference last week, my roommate Patty Bennett (www.PattyStamps.com) gave me one of her handmade creations as a gift. I love it & wore it proudly and often while at our corporate event! I wear a lot of black/white/red so she could not have chosen better fabric.
Patty layered 4 layers of fabric for each flower (4 different flower shapes in all) using Stampin' Up!s exclusive Flower Folds die found on page 201 of our large Idea Book & Catalog and shown here.
After stacking the 4 flowers of 4 layers each, she pinched it all together with some strong thread then glued a button from her grandmother's button collection. I feel honored to have that little keepsake on my brooch.
The back conceals the fastener beneath fabric that Patty glued on.
Last November I was prepping for a presentation to a Sewing Guild and I cut these pieces out but never did anything with them. Patty's gift was a great reminder.
I had chosen colors that would represent my high school daughter's school colors – red and gold. And since black always goes well with those, I threw that in too. Plus I wanted the flower to be a little more teenage-ish. My flowers are different and were used mimicking what demonstrator Jill Olsen taught me. The petals all have fusible interfacing inside and I used 2 layers of each size but rather than stacking them, I staggered them. Like Patty, I used heavy duty thread, sewed them all together a few times in the center and sewed the button that I found in my mother-in-law's button tin that she recently passed on to me. Fastener glued on back.
Shhh… don't tell my daughter. This is going to be a Valentine's gift for her to pin to her backpack or wear on her uniform. Something tells me that once she wears it to school, I might get some faculty who will want one too. Hmmmm.. brooch for an "A" in one of Kendall's classes? Can I do that?
