Sunday, March 14, 2010

FLOWER NECKLACE BIBS

I decided to make something for myself this weekend and got carried away with making a bunch of these flower bibs. I love how floral necklace bibs are in right now. I LOVE Victorian fashion and these remind me of that. It's the attention to detail that draws me in. I also love fashions of the eighteenth century.

I made the flowers on all these necklaces from wired ribbon. They are really quite easy. I followed the tutorials in the book The Artful Ribbon by Candace Kling. I was fortunate to have gotten to take a class taught by her called Fabric Manipulation at the Surface Design Conference held a couple of years ago at the Kansas City Art Institute. I was super inspired after taking her class and had wished I had gone into Fiber as a major instead of Illustration. Oh well, I can't change the past.



I wish I had taken a pic of an individual flower but got caught up in working and forgot.



Here's what the back looks like. The book recommends using crinoline as backing to sew the flowers to. Use a heavy quilting thread when sewing down the flowers otherwise your thread could break. Once I had the flowers and leaves all sewn together I covered the crinoline with felt. You could sew this down or use a fabric glue. I chose glue.



Here's the finish. I decided to change the shear material where the jump rings are held to velvet ribbon that I had lying around. I happened to find the chain with pearls at Michael's and thought it would compliment the flowers.



There is no rule to making these. It comes down to laying things out on the table, moving it around, seeing how it all looks together and then sewing it all together.



I highly recommend this book. Even if you're not going to make ribbon flowers, the pictures are beauticul to look at.



Here's the second one I made. Love the single corsage look to this with the delicate chain. I also added yellow crystal beads.





This last one is my favorite. I wish the picture had tuned out better. I just could not get the lighting right. Though you can't see them in the pic, I added small black and grey crystal beads around the centers of the flowers. I added crystal buttons to the silver flowers.  I also used some freyed sating material on this one. That's what you see peeking out the bottom.



Check out the book below if you like Victorian fashion illustrations. This is fun to look at.

5 comments:

  1. Robyn, these are gorgeous!

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  2. They definitely turned out better than I had imagined, and really, super easy to make!

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  3. So funny to see these rosettes! I just ordered hairclips to start making these out of my scrap fabric to go with my dresses. Lord knows, I have plenty of that laying around!!! There is a great tutorial online by freespiritfabrics.

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  4. i was the kid who asked about how to get a job at hallmark today during career day at prairie view elementary and i love what you made and i am definitely going to try to get a job at hallmark and design cards!!!!!

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  5. Absolutely gorgeous work! Now I gotta make one of these for my wedding. Don't know when it will happen, but I know I'm marrying John (He told me so :) )

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