After making some tank dresses, I decided to make some flowers with the scraps of fabric that I had left over.
Kanzashi is a Japanese fabric flower making technique.
I recently bought some Kanzashi makers made by Clover. I have always liked the sewing notions made by this company. If I had more space in my sewing room, I think I might own almost everything they make.
Yes you can make these flowers without this tool, but using the Kanzashi maker is much easier. As there is no need to pre-cut squares or circles of the same size. Which can be difficult or at least tedious. Really, it is much easier with the tool.
All you have to do is follow the numbers with the needle and thread, kind of like connect-a-dots. This is great way to use up scraps of fabric or any odd buttons and beads you may have lying around. Each tool makes a different shaped petal. I bought both the large and small sizes for each of the shapes. I prefer to make these flowers than yo yo’s.
Another advantage is that I can sit and make many of them while my husband needs me to be quiet while he satisfies his Netflix addiction. (Which he claim pales in comparison to my addiction to keeping my sewing stuff in every room in the house and sending him to work with threads on his clothes)
These organza flowers turned out really well. I think it is because the fabric was lightweight but fairly stiff.
After using up the corners of some vintage hankies for this dress, I had to do something with center squares that I had left over. As you can see they also worked out well. I ironed some lightweight interfacing onto the fabric of one of these flowers (in the center of the flower group). The result was that it produced a firmer flower.Without the interfacing the flowers are softer.
These flowers were made with scraps that I had left over after making the bandana dress. I used the pointed petal maker.
I haven’t attached the flowers to the dresses yet because I can’t decide if I want them on the dress or if I should use them as hair accessories.
With this tool you can also make a pointed petal that resembles little slippers. You can also create a different effect depending on whether you use the front or back of the petal.
As I said above, you can use this tool makes pointed petals and you can use any number of petals to make a flower. By the way, using this tool you can make leaves and butterflies (combining the petals from the large and small size tools.)
You can also make a very pretty flower with the round petal maker.