Flash and Trash - Part XI

Fun With Flowers!

Now that the vest is assembled, I can get to one of the more fun parts of the whole project, the embellishments.  To start, I'll need to attach all the fake flowers.  Usually I make my own flowers with  my own templates, but I had all these silk flowers in my studio that weren't being used and the colors worked with the fringe and the velvet so that's what I'm using.  I've pinned the flowers in place with the help of the dress form.  This was nice because I was able to back up and see if I liked the arrangment of all the flowers and leaves.

Before attaching the flowers, I had to decide which threads would look right with which flowers, as I'm going to do a little free motion embroidery/thread painting to attach and enhance the flowers all at the same time.  This is fun because I get to pull out all the metallic and sparkly threads that I have and then find bobbin threads to go with them.  The smaller flowers only needed one color of thread, but some of the larger flowers have up to four different kinds of thread on them. This is only a small selection of the threads I've chosen:

Once the flowers were pinned in place, I dropped the feed dogs on my sewing machine, loaded up the thread and bobbin and attached the flowers. 

I concentrated mostly on the centers, leaving the edges free.

This is very easy to do and works up pretty quickly.

Lastly, there are butterflies, one on the front and one on the back.  These were leftover from a project a many years back which had a butterfly print.  I've had them stored with the silk flowers and funky fibers and never used them.  They even still had the Steam-a-Seam2 backing still on them, so I fused them to the vest and embellished them.  I used a gold glittery thread and outlined all the veins in the wings, and then added a black body in black metallic thread.

Once all the flowers are done, my favorite part will be next:  the beads and sequins!

Parting Shot:  New Glasses.   My daughter got new glasses today.  I noticed a few weeks ago that she was having trouble seeing the television and she admitted to not being able to see well.  After an eye appointment and finding out that her eyes had really deteriorated quite a bit in a 9 month period, we were able to get new glasses that she likes and that improve her eyesight.