Shower Flowers

One of my knit friends is about to have a baby boy and we decided to turn this week's knit gathering into a baby shower. We've been busily making gifts (more about mine in the next post). A couple of us decided we needed some extras for the shower. So, she brought a balloon and she asked me to bring flowers. I wasn't sure I wanted to bring real flowers and an idea popped in my head...I wondered if I could use baby socks or washcloths to make flowers?! The idea was so exciting that I had to go for it!

I didn't find any socks that I would work but I did find a set of little washcloths that I liked. I also bought some paint to match the green on the washcloths as well as ribbon, a fancy piece of textured card stock paper for the leaves, a vase, and some shredded blue paper. I painted bamboo skewers for the stems. I folded the washcloths into thirds, turned down the top edge toward the bottom corner (on each end), placed a skewer inside near the end, and rolled it into a bud...


As I neared the other end, I folded it over to hide the edge. I then tied ribbon tightly around the bottom of each bud to hold it together and tied a pretty little bow.


For the leaves, I made a pattern, cut out one for each stem, punched two holes in the bottom of each, made a slight lengthwise bend in each leaf (to give it more dimension and a leaf-like shape) and slid a leaf onto each skewer...


I put shredded paper into a glass vase and arranged the buds. I cut the ends of some of the skewers to make some shorter so I could create a more pleasing arrangement. I then packed a little more shredded paper around the edges to hold the stems in place. Here's the result...


I'm really happy with how it turned out. The buds are so cute...


This project was fun, inexpensive and, unlike real flowers that will wither, these flowers can be put to good use.