Tattered Florals Challenge

Hello there!  I haven't posted in a long time, but Tim Holtz has a new challenge up on his blog that I couldn't resist participating in!  The details of the Tattered Floral Challenge are posted on Tim's blog at http://timholtz.com/tattered-floral-challenge/.

The gist of it is this:  Use the Tattered Florals die to create something!  Well, this just happens to be my very favorite die of all time and certainly my most used die, so I thought I'd whip something up for the challenge and share another great project that I did with the die last year.

For the challenge, I made a matching diaper cover and headband with removable flowers.  My baby boy is due in TWO DAYS, so I've been in baby crafting mode for the last few months.  I taught myself how to sew and have made some amazing things for my little boy.  This project is NOT for him--haha!--I couldn't think of anything boyish enough to make using the Tatttered Florals die!  I'm going to send it to my niece, Elleny, who is just a month old, for Easter.

I used Katrina's Soaker pattern, available at http://katrinassqs.blogspot.com/2007/10/free-soaker-pattern.html, to make the diaper cover.  The cover that I made is not intended to be used for anything other than cuteness over top of a disposable diaper!  It is not waterproof or particularly absorbent, so it doesn't fall into the cloth diaper category.  I used a soft fleece for the leg and waist bands and a random pink polyester scrap for the cover part. Then I just sewed it up on my sewing machine according to the instructions.  I used the same pink polyester and a piece of elastic to sew up a basic headband.

I used a bunch of pink, white and yellow pieces from my giant basket (okay, multiple giant baskets...) of fabric scraps and the Tattered Florals die and my Sizzix Big Shot to cut a bunch of flowers for decorations.  Then I layered them up and cut a hole through the center using my Crop-a-dile big bite, fed a plastic snap cap through the hole with a stud on the back of the flower and secured it using my snap pliers.  I used KAM snaps, available at http://kamsnaps.com/.  I am crazy about their snaps!  I've been putting them on everything!  Some tips:  If you try this project, make sure that you don't put so many layers of flowers that it gets too thick to properly set the snap.  Also, just forget about trying to use the thin petaled flower on the die on any fabric that has stretch to it.  The petals just pull right off.

Then I laid out the completed flowers around the top of the diaper cover, just below the waistband, and marked where to set the snap sockets and did the same with the headband.  I used my snap pliers to get all the sockets set in place.

And that's it!  Done!  Then I got to play around--putting all the different flowers into each of the different snap positions and see which ones look the cutest.

Here is the completed project:

Diaper Cover & Headband with floral decorations detatched-  very useful for cleaning the cover or customizing the design of the flowers.

Diaper Cover & Headband with floral decorations snapped on!

Now, back to the project from last year that I said I would share. It's pretty similar to this one, but in bulk! One of my very best friends, Rebekah, had her second beautiful daughter last year and we held a little baby shower for her to celebrate.  At the shower, we all made tons and tons of flower hair clips for her girls using flowers that I'd pre-cut out of a ton of different scraps of fabric with the Tattered Florals die and a bunch of small pieces of ribbons.  This was back before my plastic snap discovery, so we used decorative brads to hold the flowers together (once again, using the Crop-a-dile to punch a hole through the center before adding the brad) and then hot glued them onto store bought hair clips.  They can be used alone as hair clips or attached to any baby headband.  This was a great project for a girl baby shower and everyone had a lot of fun creating pretty and exciting flowers with the different combinations of flower sizes from the dies and patterns and colors from the fabric scraps.  There was even a 6 year old at the party who was very enthusiastic about being able to help with this project for her little cousins!

Here are the flower hair clips we created at Rebekah's baby shower!

So that's that!  The Tattered Florals die is my absolute favorite way to make the most of those small fabric scraps that you might otherwise just toss in the trash and convert them into beautiful embellishments for clothing and accessories.