Last week I found a tutorial for a pomander that struck my fancy. It was on Betz White's blog. The tutorial was in a slide show format, which meant I couldn't print it out so I took some notes and then played this weekend. My notes weren't great but I'm not one to follow directions well, anyway.
I used generic Jo-Ann's felt (not 100% wool), golden pearly-headed pins, and 3" and 2" Styrofoam balls. The tutorial said to glue the flowers. I stitched them. I'm just not that neat with glue and glue and fabric just don't mix for me. I enjoyed stitching and molding the flowers as I went and am quite happy with the results.
The first ball is larger, made using a 3" ball. It took more roses to cover but I like the proportions. The second ornament is done on a 2" ball. When I added the hanging cord (I used gold ribbon I had on hand), I added jingle bells to the bottom because I want to use the balls as ornaments. For the two balls, I used five sheets of felt for the roses (pale pink, hot pink, red, yellow and orange) and two sheets of green (I only used a little of the green, for leaves). With a sprig of mistletoe pinned to the bottom, they would make nice kissing balls.
The rose that Betz taught in the tutorial is a very nice rose that is simple to make. I've been thinking about what I want to do with the extra roses I have. I may use them for a small corsage-like brooch. I like the look of the pin in the center of the flower so I'll need to find some similar beads to add. They'd also go nice at the end of a hair clip.
This last globe is the product of hating to waste anything. I love how these colors look together and was sad when I ran out of felt. So I took all the scraps from cutting the circles for the roses and pinned them randomly to a ball. I just kept adding more and more scraps. At first it looked really mangy but as I added scraps it got a bit better. I still haven't decided if it's ugly enough to be cute. I don't think so. In any case, it will be simple to unpin the scraps. I have had the thought of unpinning the scraps and cutting them into small circles and then covering the ball with this "confetti." I think it would look rather like those sequin covered balls from the 50s and 60s, without the glitz.
Thank you for sharing the tutorial. How many roses did you have left over?
ReplyDeleteJane