wedding

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Simple Wedding Rose Fascinator Tutorial

I made this hairpiece/fascinator for my friend’s wedding. She was one of my bridesmaids and really liked the ones I made for my wedding, so with her input on styles and colours she liked, I came up with this:

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Photo credit: Trinh Truong and Mai-Anh Doan

She looked stunning on her own, but I like that I had a small part to play in the look of her big day 🙂

She asked if I would also make one for her mom as a surprise, though without the veil part. Here is a shot with both. Such a sweet idea.

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Supplies:

  • 2″ x 25″ piece of fabric (I used tightly-knit jersey material. Finer or more easily fraying fabrics may require you to double up the material, meaning a 4″ x 25″ piece folded lengthwise)
  • scrap piece of same fabric about 3″ x 3″
  • embroidery thread and needle with large enough eye to accommodate
  • tulle for veil
  • broad ribbon (at least 2″ wide and ideally not satin) for leaves
  • artificial stamens (available at most craft stores)
  • hot glue gun
  • clear-drying fabric glue
  • Swarovski or other glue-on crystals (optional)
  • clear-drying tacky glue (if adding crystals)
  • alligator-style clip or other hair clip

Step 1:

Take the strip of fabric and fold it in on itself repeatedly without overlapping the folds (see image below). Then hand sew along the two sides as shown using a basting stitch. Knot off at the far right (as in image) and not at left. Take ends of string and gather fabric. You will see the rose shape form. Now tie off end. Arrange rose shape as you would like and use hot glue to tack in place. Poke stamens through. Now hot glue rose shape in place as desired. Let dry.

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Step 2:

To create one leaf (you will need to repeat this step for multiple leaves), cut four pieces of ribbon long enough that two pieces side-by-side form a square-ish shape (exactitude is not crucial). Lay two pieces one positioned above the other side-by-side (like the image on the right below) on top of cellophane or other piece of smooth plastic you don’t mind potentially getting glue on (paper will come away with the glue one dried, ruining your leaf). Apply a uniform, thin layer of fabric glue all over the upwards facing sides of both pieces of ribbon. Place the other two pieces on top, side-by-side (like the image on the left below). Press together and let dry. Basically you will have a ribbon and glue “sandwich” with the “spines” (where the ribbons meet) being perpendicular for stability.

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One your “sandwich” is dry, you can draw on a leaf shape and cut it out (see image below).

combined leaf

Step 3:

Run fabric glue along raw, cut edge of ribbon leaf to stop fraying. Dab off excess. Let dry.

Step 4:

Position and hot glue leaves and tulle in place on back of rose.

Step 5:

Sew alligator clip to fabric square. Position on back of rose and hot glue on. Trim as needed (rose will obviously not be a perfect square shape).

Step 6:

Use clear tacky glue (apply with a toothpick) to add crystals if desired.

TIP: don’t worry if tulle doesn’t lay exactly right. That’s what steam and hairspray is for 😉

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…more of my crafted wedding

I forgot a few things! Too much DIY with this wedding, and all done within the past few months: it just all blurs together.

This was my hairpiece. I made it out of the lace from my mom’s wedding dress.

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And I made these ones for my bridesmaids.

Here they are in action:

Last, but not least, here is the ring bearer box and pillow. I did the sewing, my (now) husband made the box.

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My Knitted Wedding

Well, I talked about doing it, and I’m pleased to say that I actually did.

With the help of some friends, including Ilana, Joanna, and Lynn, I have knitted my wedding bouquets, corsages, and boutonnières.

Not only can I still not believe I got them done on time, I am beyond happy with how they turned out. They are even worth the 240 inches of i-cord I had to knit.

As you probably know, I also knit my wedding shrug. Here are a few pictures of it.

I’m now married to the love of my life and knitting was involved. No wonder I’m smiling.

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Flora and Fauna

First, the fauna:

Happy Easter Monday! From Desmond

Now for the flora:

As mentioned in previous posts, I (with the help of some awesome fellow knitters) am knitting the flowers for my wedding in addition to my shrug. This is why I’ve essentially been away from the blogosphere for the past month or so. That and the other elements of wedding planning and getting ready to move in May. Now I finally have some actual FO flowers worth sharing, so I thought I would.

First is this tulip from Lesley Stanfield’s beautiful book 100 Flowers to Knit & Crochet. (she has also made it available in a few other places, one for free!). I think it might be my favourite so far.

So favourited, I had to take several pictures.

Here are the others I’ve been working on:

An anemone, also from Lesley’s book.

This calla lily is another favourite. The pattern is by Cathy Ren.

A peony, also from Leslie’s book.

And lastly, a rose. It’s this pattern I mentioned in this post.

I think the calla lily and tulips will win out as the bouquet flowers. Now to figure out what I want to do for corsages and boutonnières…

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Excitement

Now that the mittens from my last post are done, I’ve finally had time to work on my wedding shrug prototype (originally mentioned here).

Aaaaand *drum roll*

Ta-da!

Now to start it in white!

… and then take it to where my dress is beings stored to make sure the colour matches. Man, getting married is a lot of work.

Speaking of the wedding, I also need to start making some prototype flowers. My fiancé and I have decided we’d like to have homemade flowers at our wedding. I originally got the idea when I was first looking at knitted possibilities back when we first got engaged, and he agrees that it would be a nice, personal, (and inexpensive!) touch, and very “me.”

One idea:

Bunch of other ideas:

crafted bouquet

Patterns I’m leaning towards:

Crochet version

Knit version. However, I like the leaves and stems from here better.

Another knit version that I really like for the corsages and boutineers, simply because it is flatter.

And, since I’ll need about 50 flowers, I’m very lucky to have awesome knitting friends who have said they’ll help 😀

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Creativ Festival haul

Two posts a tad close together, I know, but I had to share the fruits of my second day at the Creativ Festival. Pics of my adventures as a model for the Fashion Knits show to hopefully come soon.

Voilà my haul of goodies, comprising both days:

Breaking it down, we have the two awesome books I got, more detail in my other post. Both are entirely worth the investment, but I love that I got them at a huge discount from Grantham Books. They’re at the festival every year, and I always come home with something. On their site they list other shows they go to as well as permanent locations.

In the foreground you can see some navy blue DK possum merino. That’s right, possum. It is made in New Zealand, and available in Canada here, the UK here, and the USA here or here. Apparently, “the possum fur is hollow and, when spun with merino wool, produces a hardwearing yarn with superior heat retaining qualities.” Either way, it feels awesome and I am excited to try it. Here’s a close-up.

I also picked up some good ol’ Berroco Vintage Chunky in white from Creative Yarns. It shall one day (soon) become the shrug for my wedding dress. I’ll be using the same pattern as for the one I talk about here.

I think it will be gorgeous. Actually, I know it will be because someone has already done it:

I also got some neats beads, pendants, and a pair of cool glass earrings at this store’s booth.

After much hunting, I was finally able to find a booth that sold Brother equipment for my Brother sewing machine. I got some thread, extra bobbins, a blind presser foot for fancy hems on dresses and dress pants (I have a backlog of stuff to fix…), and a teflon foot and twin needle for sewing onto knitting, so that maybe I can finally get the lining onto my cabled belt from way back.

One thing I did not buy, purely because I have a large enough stash already, is the HPKY I fell in love with. Their website isn’t the greatest, but I believe the yarn is called Lamé. It’s a bulkier weight and has strands of glitter running through it. The booth selling it (called Yarn Deals, LLC) I could not find a website for anywhere, but they had these wicked knitted samples that only need 1 skein:

I especially like the one with the tapered and braided ends. It makes it really easy to wear as a scarf or snood/hood type thing. Gotta remember this design idea for later.

And finally, you may remember Ozzy the Alpaca from yesterday’s post. Today, I leave you with a fortune.

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Uh-oh, I’m engaged

You know what this means… wedding related knitting. The fiancé is going to looooove this.

Alas, I am not the first to blog on the topic, surprise surprise. JoAnnaJae does a particularly good job of it here.

A whole gallery of hand-knitted wedding dresses can be found here. Some are gorgeous, some hideous, all of them make my hands and brain hurt just looking at them.

And then there is the woman who loves sheep perhaps a little too much.

Though even that is nice compared to this:

Just not my thing I guess…

Though I must give kudos to the Dr. Who nod ❤ That is one epic scarf.

So I’ll skip the knitted dress, thanks.

I LOVE this idea, however. In fact, I kind of want to steal this couple’s entire wedding.

This calls to mind their TARDIS cake topper…

What is it with knitters and Dr. Who? Are we just all quirky like that?

There are also library-themed weddings out there! Diana of our.city.lights and her beau, Scott Douglas (a famous librarian-writer, for those of you not in the know) threw a fabulous affair that I am sure smelled of vellum and newsprint.

However, my fave for library-themed has to go to this wedding at the James J. Hill Library in Saint Paul, MN.

In all honesty, we will probably have a low-key affair and just follow our whims and play ofo of our many quirks instead of one unified theme, but you can bank on these babies hitting a mailbox near you.

That, and the fact that I’ll be knitting my garter 😉