DIY: Fabric Flower Tutorial

Today I have a tutorial to share on how to make a different kind of fabric flower.

These are more like a tight rose (The one on the far right in the picture above)

This is a VERY poor picture of what the rosette looks like (without the beads and in VERY POOR LIGHTING!!)

What you will need is:

An embroidery hoop (as long as it's bigger than the diameter of your flowers, it's all good)

A pen

About 1/4 yard of fabric (silk taffeta, or any heavier fabric recommended)

Clear thread (or same color as fabric) and needle

Measuring tape and scissors.

Start by drawing a circle on the fabric as big as you want the flower to be. Proceed by putting enough fabric through the embroidery hoop  and tightening it!

With the remaining fabric cut a strip of fabric about 2" wide by 2" long (that is about what you need for a 1.5" flower). It is better to cut the strip too long than too short. You can always cut the excess, but is very difficult adding legth to it.

Proceed by making a 5 point "star" on your embroidery hoop with the clear thread.. Please refer to the picture below. The thread should meet in the middle and then go out in five different spots around the edge of the circle

Grab the long piece fabric and secure it to the middle with the thread and needle.

This is where the tricky part begins. Pul the fabric strip over one of the divisions of thread and then under the next one. Continue going over and under around the circle until you run out of fabric.

Once you are out of fabric, add random stitches all over the flower to keep it in place.. Cut around the circle and tuck the edges into the flower. I sometimes also add fabric glue in between the rosette and the fabric that was secured by the embroidery hoop.

And ta-dah!!

Click here to learn how to make the rest of the flowers and follow me to learn how to make the garter pictured above

Do you know how to make other fabric flowers?

Aranza

DIY: Wedding Day Garter Tutorial.

Welcome friends from Pinterest!! Leave a sweet comment and subscribe if you like this tutorial

Even though we are not tossing a garter at the reception, I still wanted to have one for Ace to take off later.

So, I decided to make one!

I had seen this picture on Pinterest and I really liked the fact that it was lace and not just elastic with satin fabric.

Via Pinterest

You will need:

Stretch lace trim (I got mine at hobby lobby).

Three fabric flowers and extra fabric that matches the flowers

Small beads

Clear/white/ivory thread (and needle)

To begin, measure your thigh and cut your lace trim 1" shorter than this.

Sew the edges together by overlapping 1" of the lace and doing a zig zag over the raw edges. Like so...

Now it's time for the fun part!

Gather your fabric flowers and decide how you want to arrange them. Learn how to make these fabric flowers here and here. I added gold beads to the center of my flowers. 

I took a picture of how I wanted to arrange them (I ended up changing the arrangement, but that helped me have an idea for when I sewed them on).

Pin the flowers in place and sew a couple of stitch to keep them in place.

Later on, I added a few fabric "petals" under one of the flowers. 

And more beads directly onto the lace in the shape of a leaf.

And tadah! You are done :)

If I were to throw my garter, I would probably make a second one, but without the bling; the bling was very time consuming

God bless,

Aranza

OoTD: Great Love

Psalm 89:1-2 reads:

"I will sing of the Lord's great love forever;

with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.

I will declare that your love stands firm forever,

that you established your faithfulness in heaven itself."

This day I put on great love. Not because of my ability to love immersely, but because God loved me first!

And I wanted to share that love with you. He loves through "thick and thin" (as our society ikes to say).

He is faithful through my successes AND my failures. He sticks around and LOVES me when I'm a brat  to my parents, I resent someone, or I'm unforgiving. He loves me through my unfaithfulness, because He is faithful to his love for me AAAND YOU!

Sweater is from American Eagle, necklace from icing, velvet pants Vera Wang (kohl's).. And I don't remember where I got the lace tank top

Lace booties are from Urban Outfitters (got them 3 or 4 years ago) and the leg warders are DIY from a sweater and some gold buttons!

I made this headband last year.

I am no professional knitter, but I remember making a 12 stitch wide headband by whatever fit around my head. I made the bow in the same manner: a rectangle of 14 (purl?) stitches by about 45 rows (I wanted to make the bow slightly wider than the headband) .. the rectangle ended up being 20" by 10". I attached both of them with a narrower strip (12 stitches wide by 9 rows) which is stretched a lot and I also used a narrower needle to make it. I used a size 8 or 10 needle for the rest of the headband.. Sorry for the unprofessional tutorial, but I don't remember exactly what I did!

Honestly, I don't think there's a wrong way to make a bow headband because you can make the bow as big or little as you want!

Have a great day :D

DIY: Will you be my bridesmaid invitation

You guys know that I'm engaged, so part of the wedding planning process was asking my best friends to be a part of the happiest day of my life!

I didn't want to just go up and ask them. I wanted to ask them in a more personal, and thoughtful way. 

So, I surfed the web for different ideas on how to do this, and I found a few cute one, but none of them were hitting the mark.

Too simple

Again, too simple

I loved the idea of a treasure box, but I had to make 7 of them

So, when I saw these little dress boxes at goodwill (apparently, they are from the dollar store), I was flooded with ideas!

And this is what I came up with.

I liked the idea of giving them a fabric swatch for my wedding colors (which are constantly changing hehehe), so I decided to make a flower out of them.

I started by cutting many circles in my wedding colors. To make the "flowers" I folded each circle in 4 and run the corners through my sewing machine one after the other. I ended up with a string of 8 or so little circles (that looked more like triangles now). Then, I formed the shape of the flower and secured them in place (stitches or glue)

I made 7 of these "flowers" (I have 7 bridesmais)

Then I moved onto the little dresses.

I cut a square about 2 inches bigger all around than the cardboard dress form. I went to my sewing machine and sewed through the waist part of the dress gathering the fabric as I went. It took me about 5 minutes to sew all of them.

To finish them off, I tucked the sides of the dress in and hot glued them in place (to avoid as many fraying edges as possible.

This is what it looked like at this point (except without the ribbon.. thats where the gathering happened)

  

I glued the top of the dresses and cut the sweetheart shape.

Added the ribbon/lace, and then I moved on to the insides!

I basically just glued a personalized "letter" (which I found online) asking them to be my bridesmaids.. and, of couse, I couldn't forget the ring!

OoTD: Mustard Sweater and Floral Skirt

Today I wanted to take a quick moment to post an outfit I wore a couple of weeks ago and never got a chance to share.

This is one of my favorite skirts... Actually, this is my favorite skirt.. You can find it styled else where in my blog..

And I also love this scarf (which happens to be Ace's hehe)

I paired the skirt (forever XXI) with black tights, gray booties (Timberlands) and a mustard sweater.

I added a green belt to bring out the pop of green in the skirt

What do you think? Subscribe if you liked this outfit

Today's scripture that brings truth to my heart: "Gold there is, and rubies in abundance, but lips that speak knowledge are a rare jewel." (Proverbs 20:15 NIV)

I like talking... A lot, so sometimes I need to remind myself to be wise and avoid unnecessary words. It's better to say few knowledgable words, than ramble nonse infinitely. So I encourage you to speak knowledge :)

God bless, Aranza 

Ps. I love this skirt because it has pockets!!

OoTD: God's Beautiful Creation

Here is the outfit I wore a couple of days ago. I live in the Midwest and the weather has been going nuts, so I took these pictures when the temperature was below freezing!

We had just have a tremendous snow storm, so I had to go with rain boots 

On top of being chilly, it was windy!! But oh! How beautiful God's creation is.. especially covered in snow!!

I don't know how this happened to this picture, but I'm going to leave it alone and enoy it!

 I wore the belt most of the day, but I took it off later and I think I like it either way.

I got thse boots for Christmas, but when I got them they had brown laces, so recently I switched them up for a pretty black bow!

When I originally bought this shirt, it was an extra large. I really liked the bow detail at the neckline, and the softness of it, but it was too big. So, I took the sides in and left the bottom hem untouched. I really like the fact that it's a very long shirt now!

Yours, Aranza

"Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." (Psalm 37:3, 4 ESV)

God is good