You can see a little gallery of photos of the flower I made for this tutorial HERE.
I gathered some historical information and photos about the Tudor Rose HERE.
Here's my remix of the flower portion of the tutorial:
Getting Started:
Choosing fabric.- The fabric should be medium to heavy weight. If you use lightweight fabric, you'll need to apply a lightweight fusible interfacing.
- The flower is quite complex and gorgeous on it's own. I suggest avoiding strong prints that may distract from the details of the flower itself.
- Each leaf and petal has a front and a back. Consider splurging on the front fabric and going cheap on the backs.
- How much fabric? A bit more than a yard. I can break it down into petals and leaves or fronts and backs if you wish.
Other supplies.
- You'll need the basic machine sewing supplies: coordinating thread, scissors, iron, etc.
- You'll also need to do some hand sewing so be sure you have a needle and thread on hand.
- Batting or wadding. I used a medium thick synthetic quilting batting. I think a cotton or poly-blend would work as well.
- If you have some freezer paper, I'd suggest using it for your pattern pieces.
- The flower's center requires a base of some kind. I use plastic canvas, but any plastic may work. The lids from margarine tubs or coffee cans would work. Also, file folders work great. I haven't tried it, but peltex or timetex would probably work as well.
First, I cut out the fabric:
There are only 4 different pattern pieces the worry about for this flower. In truth, what I've dubbed "leaves" are actually sepals or tiny petals. For simplicity's sake I'm sticking with petals and leaves. You will find the PDF pattern HERE.
You'll need to cut out 10 of each pattern piece from your fabric.I am a huge fan of using freezer paper for my patterns. I've actually cut out 10 of each pattern piece. That way I have a single freezer paper pattern piece to match every piece of fabric I will cut out.
Freezer paper rocks because:
(You might have guessed from the picture that I am upcycling a pair of pants to use for the petals.)
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Pin. The petals require a bit of batting as well as the fronts and backs. The batting pieces should be trimmed off at the bottom about 2 inches. This will decrease the bulk we don't want want in the center of the flower. This is the best way to pin your petals together: Lay your back piece right-side-up. Lay your front piece on top, right side-side-down. Lay your batting on the very top. Pin. If you pin that order, the petal will look nice and poofy when you turn it. Stitch. Stitch around the petals using a .5" seam allowance and leaving a nice big opening at the bottom for turning. Don't bother trimming the batting near the seams. The bulk of batting in seam allowances will help boost the dimensions of the petals. Turn. Carefully turn and gently press each petal. Top-Stitch. I have top-stitched the petals a multitude of different ways. You can see examples of that HERE. When I keep my top-stitches at least 1-1.5 inches away from the edge of the petals, the petals get a nice poofy 3-D effect. |
Fourth, attach the leaves to the petals:
Pin the small ring of petals on top and stitch as shown. Now all that's left is the center piece! |
Final step is making the center:
The center of this Tudor Rose is finished with a large button detailed with canadian smocking. I found a great canadian smocking tutorial right HERE. It's easier than you think, I promise! Once you read through the tutorial, you'll find you need to mark a grid on the reverse of your fabric. What I do is take a piece of very thin/feather-weight fusible interfacing and place it on my cardboard fabric cutting board which has a 1 inch grid. I can then mark the interfacing with a marker and fuse it to the back of a 14" square of fabric. The center picture shows what the back side looks like when all the smocking has been completed. I used the bright orange thread only because it shows up better for the photos. Once you flip it over, you can see the cool basket weave pattern. It looks so cool, right? |
Have you ever heard of plastic canvas? It's a fairly common staple at most craft stores. Usually it is used for yarn crafts like tissue box covers and some holiday decorations. You can see a bunch of traditional plastic canvas crafts HERE. I like to use it for making bags. It makes a nice stiff, yet breathable reinforcement for structured bags. To make the big button, I cut out a circle of canvas and wrapped the smocked fabric around it. You can see the back looks pretty ugly, but no one will ever see it, right? The finished button always reminds of the lattice crust of cherry pie. Once you hand stitch the button to the center of the petal rings, you're done! |
Other tips and such:
- If you scroll back up and check out the pics of my petals and leaves, you'll notice some irregularities. Some of the seams are wonky, the shapes are not all perfectly uniform. I'm fine with those little defects. When I look at my finished project, I don't notice that my top-stitching isn't perfectly even or that my leaves aren't absolutely symmetrical. For me, that's a major plus to this complicated pattern. It's not very fussy and therefore perfect for a lazy sewer like myself!
- In my experience, the most tedious part of this project is cutting the fabric. There are 40 pieces for the petals and leaves, 10 pieces of batting, and then you have the center. The sewing part goes by very quickly, I promise.
- The smocking in the center looks best when done in solid-colored fabric. I use a 1 inch grid for my smocking, but a larger grid would still look cool and be less work. I wouldn't recommend going any smaller.
- Depending on the weight of your fabrics, your finished project could get pretty heavy. Consider the weight of your flower when choosing what type of bag or pillow you choose to attach it to. The original pattern calls for a flower on each side of the bag. I made one double-flowered bag and while the person I made it for was very pleased, I wouldn't want to carry a bag that was so heavy.
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Here is Ricochet's license to remix SavvySeam.com's pattern:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The link to the pattern PDF doesn't work...can you link it up a different way, or a new one? I'd really really like to make this for some pillows :) Thanks!!
ReplyDeleteI've double checked the links to the PDF pattern and they all work. Because I used a link archive service, called "way back", the first screen you see after clicking the link will be a "way back" link retrieval page and that should take you right to the PDF. I will also see about emailing the PDF to you, Vickie. :-)
ReplyDeleteThe PDF pattern didn't come up for me either
ReplyDeleteThe PDF link works on my PC, laptop, nook, iphone, and computer at my local library so I'm guessing the trouble is due to a security/firewall/pop-up-blocker type issue. Please email me at ricochethandbags(at)hotmail(dot)com and I will email you the PDF file.
ReplyDeleteFor anyone else trying the link, once you click on it, a "way back" web archive retrieval page will pop up. It takes 1-5 minutes to locate and load up the file, so be patient.
Email me if you still have trouble.
Here's the direct link to the PDF:
ReplyDeletehttp://web.archive.org/web/20070316122815/http://www.savvyseams.com/bags/flower.pdf
I'm never patient with wayback. I always click on "impatient" which didn't work this time either. So taking Ric's advice I let it go longer as I did a few other things and it still said loading SO I held down the control key and clicked on impatient and it did show up. Don't know if the control did it or it was ready
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for doing this... I am a pictorial learner - you saved me!
ReplyDeleteI made the mistake of buying all the supplies for this before checking the entire tutorial on Wayback Machine - I'm SO glad you redid this tutorial! It's gorgeous - I actually like your version better than the original =)
ReplyDelete