Tutorial: Singed Flower Wreath

Spring has sprung with an audible boi oi oing noise around here. The nut trees are blooming with all their drowse inducing pollen, the sun is shining, and my favorite frozen yogurt place has Girl Scout cookie flavored yogurt. It’s heavenly.

So to celebrate the change of seasons I whipped up a new wreath for the front door. For this project I returned to one of the most popular projects I’ve ever produced, my organza flowers. For this one I wanted bolder spring colors so instead of using organza I looked for some different varieties of fabric that had a high polyester content. I think most of what I ended up with was intended for lining, but a lot of faux taffetas will work too. You can basically do this with any fabric that isn’t natural.

The wreath form is a simple styrofoam wreath, which I wrapped with crepe paper. If you are in a wet area you should use ribbon or fabric because the crepe paper will melt, but my front porch is covered, crepe paper is cheap, and the color was perfection. So I went with it. I just used a white glue to stick down one end, and then I got to wrapping.

Next cut a ton of leaves and flower shapes out of your fabric. Each flower looks best when it’s got between three to five layers on it. It might seem counterintuitive, but you don’t want perfectly cut shapes here. The blobbier your cuts the better. These will wrinkle up as they singe and look awesome. You can see from the picture that mine look like weird little gingerbread men, so don’t worry about making them look neat.

In a well ventilated area, hold the fabric over a flame. You don’t want the flame to touch because aside from the fire hazard it will also make it singe dark and black and ugly. Just hold it close enough for the fabric to shrink away from it.

See? From blobby gingerbread men to pretty 3D flowers. Stack a few of your flowers on top of each other, rotating so the petals all floof out.

When I made these flowers last time I handsewed each layer together and used beads to make intricate little stamens. I’d still choose that way if I didn’t have to make them in bulk. Making enough for a wreath means I needed something a whole lot quicker. So I used a decorative stitch on my sewing machine. I’ve never seen a sewing machine that didn’t make some kind of a polka dot stitch, so you just need to set your machine to that, and then lift the needle up and move it to a new spot for each dot you make.

Once you trim off all the loose threads, it looks pretty adorable.

Then it’s just time to whip out the hot glue gun and go nuts. I started with a layer of leaves, but since I’d covered the wreath form with that crepe paper, I didn’t have to worry about coverage, just aesthetics.

Once the leaves are on then I just went back over them and glued on my flowers.

For a hanger I used a pretty spring ribbon and looped it through the center before tying a big fancy bow.

I specifically chose colors that were bold enough to use all summer long, but because I stayed in the pinky palette I don’t think it’s too soon to put this baby to use. And it’s bright enough that it will still bring me cheer on those rainy Spring days while I wait for summer to come.