I never promised you a rose garden

I did, however, promise one to the next Creative Underground collaborative project! This one is a summery garland for which we were to make ornaments, with a garden theme. And unlike the other CU swaps I've played in, for this one I have NO idea what the finished project will be like. But here's my little piece of it: dozens of colorful garden angels (you can't really tell in this group shot, but the leaves are the wings). Sweet, huh?

Each flower is a fairly simple ruffled ribbon rose but instead of the usual folded rosebud center I cut little faces out of a cute cotton print, and stitched and stuffed them to form flattish button-like centers. I secured each puffy little face to a small piece of crinoline, then twirled the gathered ribbon around it and tacked it in place along with the ribbon leaves. I took a few tiny tacking stitches around the underside of the face wherever it seemed like a good idea, too, and added lengths of hanging ribbon last (not shown in this photo).

They turned out almost exactly how I envisioned them in my head, which is pretty remarkable since I made them up as I went along and the whole project was full of little trade-offs. Sure, I could have saved tons of time if I'd used cute little face buttons, but that would have cost a lot more money than the quarter yard of cotton print and a handful of fiberfill... All the right elements fell into place at just the right time. Don't you love when that happens?!

Making three dozen of these cuties was more than I bargained for -- I perfected the design around Angel #8 and after that it was a long slog to the finish line. Lucky thing they turned out so darn cute! How could I hold a grudge against those little girls?

For the upcoming Autumn issue of ARTitude Zine Brenda Marks has written a piece about how to make multiples without losing your mind, and at her suggestion I tried to keep things interesting by varying what I could: using different colors and lengths of ribbon. I also set little goals for myself to make it a game: How many faces could I cut, stitch, stuff and secure in an hour? (answer: ten if I'm paying attention, six if I'm distracted by what's on tv)

Comments

[nancy]

These are lovely. We should be getting the completed swags soon. It was nice reading how you put them together. peace