We have really enjoy our one flower bed this year.  It has changed several times throughout the year and even though summer is over, it was still looking great…..

The 3 Lantana plants that I planted in the spring have grown and grown and have now covered all of the older overgrown summer flowers.

The butterflies have loved the garden and so have we…..

 

But, night before last we had our first frost so the flowers have quickly browned off and soon the bed will be empty again.   But this will give us a wonderful canvas to paint again next year!!!

The splash of color is nice, but doesn’t this Daffodil know that it is only January!!  

These next two flowers were sort of made up as I went.

I LOVE Sunflowers and knew that I wanted some sort of a sunflower/daisy flower to be a part of the thank you gifts.

This one was simple to make as I sewed petals (right sides together), cut a small slit in the back to turn the petal and then attached them to the quilt top.  The center is basically an upside down yo-yo with some stuffing added.

For this piece, the stem was short so I was trying to think of designs that would stand upward.  I found some flower line drawings that someone had given to my kids MANY years ago and saw a design that looked like this flower.

Once again, I simply sewed the petals, turned them right side out and stitched them together with the flower base.

Unfortunately, my fabric choices did not show up well on the background, so I added the fused orange border to better show off the colors.   For this piece, I didn’t do a good job of placing the slits used for turning the petals, so they are sewn onto the background using a few beads.  That way, you cant look at the back of the petal and see the holes.

Here are some up close photos of  three of the flowers that were used for our chairmen gifts..

 

This was one of the easier of the flowers.  I fused the fabrics onto felt and then started adding thread embroidery.  The cool thing was that the more I sewed, the more the flower bent upward, making a wonderful 3-D shape.  After the fact I decided that it needed a little bling so I added some light pink beads to the center.  I did forget that the back could be seen and  used a white thread on a pink/purple felt so the stitching looked horrible.  I fixed this by taking a fabric marker and coloring the thread to make it less noticeable.

This flower was one of the last ones that I made (as time was running low) so it had to be SUPER easy.   I simply fused two fabrics together for each layer, cut out a circle, divided it into “rays” and made simple cuts to separate out the petals.  For the orange layer, I rounded the corners a bit.  The center is simply a yo-yo with a bit of batting inserted.  I started to neatly applique the center to the flower, but then decided to do it roughly to add even more texture.

  This was a design that I found online and I found that it was really easy to make.  I sewed circles comprised of two colors of fabrics, right sides together.  I then cut a small slit in the back of each petal and turned the fabrics right side out.  The individual petals were made by folding a small amount of the circle up so that it formed a triangle.   The hardest part of this flower was sewing all of the petals together at the center, as I couldn’t make my stitching be a round circle….note the lopsided center of the flower….made that way to cover my less than perfect stitching!!!