Last of the flowers

Paper Pieced Bird of Paradise

Final product

Paper pieced heliconia

Template for the paper pieced heliconia

Possible fabric

Possible fabrics

Today is my last day of making flowers...on to working on the garment - Rachel has informed me :)  She doesn't want me to just know how to make lovely flowers.  We worked a little on Saturday and we decided that it would be easiest to paper piece the heliconia since I wasn't getting the effect that I was looking for.  I was extremely glad that I did because I thought the flower turned out gorgeous!  I was able to find a paper pieced bird of paradise online but it looked extremely intricate so I decided to try to develop my own pattern.  I came out well.  I am thinking about making a mirror copy for the garment as well.  I learned a lot about paper piecing - it had been a while since I had done it the last time which was a Mariner's compass which is still in pieces.  I did do a lot of taking out of stitches since I didn't really spend the time figuring out which piece should be connected to which piece and connected to the next piece, etc.  

I am thinking about having a band of green and a band of blue fabric to connect the two groups of flowers but I found this awesome print.  I may try to incorporate it into the garment.  We'll see what happens tomorrow.