McCall 1246 flower C

I missed out on this pattern a few weeks ago when it was on eBay. I was saddened, but one of my lovely online gal friends gave me her copy! I was thrilled. I opened it, copied the pieces , and read over the instructions. Oh, my, goodness, was this thing involved. I was not feeling that crafty after all, and put it a way.

Well, the current project Im working on (it will be finished once I put on the grommets) just called for flowers. I could have taken the easy way and used some fake-os, but I wanted this project to have a special touch, so I revisited this pattern.

To prepare the fabric for style C, the rose, it suggests wetting the fabric on a gum arabic solution. Even gives you a nice little recipe. I do have gum arabic, somewhere, in my painting stash, but again, lazy. That and I knew this would take the whole bottle. I just made a solution 2 parts Elmer's, 3 parts water and brushed it evenly on the linen.

Once that dried, the linen was sealed, stiff as a board, and a wrinkle-fest. I ironed it, no steam.

Next came tracing the petals. Each flower had a lot of pieces, 17 total if you count the center piece. Geeze. 51 tracings, cuts, and hand rolling of edges. Man! That was the most time consuming part.

I wanted the edges to be nice, and it took nearly a minute and 30 seconds per leaf. Thats a lot of time! I used a big nail to roll the petal edges. The instructions assume the lady making these will have a knitting needle somewhere in her possession. Not me.

After each size of petals, I wound them with thread (X4 on the needle) and a dollop of glue to seal it. It was a fun progression the see the roses grow larger with each addition. Once they were finished, I glued and wrapped a piece of scrap linen around the wire and allowed them to dry.

They are gonna look so kick ass on what Im going to put them on. Ill be done soon.