Mother's Day fabric flowers (and a GIVEAWAY!)

A couple years ago, a friend at church had her second grade class make flowers for the women in the congregation for Mother's Day. They weren't too difficult: make wire "petal" shapes, glue some fabric on the wire for the petals, wind four or five together with fabric tape and voila! I can do that, I thought. I don't need to look for directions.

Hoo-boy, was this a fiasco! It was supposed to be a twenty minute craft. Two hours later, I finally gave up in disgust. Clear school glue didn't work. We were out of the right size hot glue sticks.

I'm not sure how my friend did it, but nothing was going my way when I sat down to make these. The two larger flowers are pansies—and I had to get darn creative to make them worth. (There is no glue involved, but the white one is satin ribbon + masking tape and the purple one is fabric + thread. If they look good, thank you, but it's really just blurry photography!)

Ironically, the other flower—the little purple one—is my favorite of the three, and not just because it was the easiest and fastest!

Truth be told, I was so disgusted with my lack of working materials that I finally gave up and Googled . . . with the words "martha stewart" in the query. (A true cry for help! At least I did my own illustrations ;) .) (Okay, so I thought I'd just seen a similar project from her, but I didn't find it.)

Her ribbon flowers instructions inspired me to try one (well, two) last time(s). (The very last one didn't work out.) I cut a strip of fabric about 1" x 6" and folded it in half, then basted the halves together along the fold:

 Once I sewed along that edge, I pulled the thread tight. The fabric gathers and naturally wants to curl around into a flower.

I sewed the ends together, stuck a piece of wire through at the seam and called it cute!

In other news, I think I'm going to be going for cut flowers from my yard instead ;) .

Are you craftier than a second grader? Have you ever made wire and fabric flowers? What did you do differently?

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This week we have a giveaway!

THIS GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED

It's this lovely crafty organizer:

It's great for all the little loose odds and ends that get lost so easily—buttons, beads, stickers, etc. It has eight compartments, and a flip-top spout for easy access. (I doubt you can tell from the picture, so it's six inches tall and four and a half inches wide.)

To win, you must:

1. Be a follower of the blog AND
2. Comment on any new post this week (before the end of Sunday).

Every comment is another entry, and every post this week is eligible! The winner, to be drawn at random, will be announced next Monday!