Quick Crafts - Last Minute Corsage

Boys!  They just don't get it.  According to Facebook, my son is now, "In a Relationship." The rules have changed except he doesn't know it.  A swing dance was scheduled up at the high school and he wanted to take the girl.  I let him know that he'd need a corsage and even offered to make him one.  He did not know, nor did he ever find out for me, the color of her dress.  He did however pick out the red roses so that is what I went with.

So in my stash of craft crap as my husband tends to call it, I gathered up the necessary supplies.

• Corsage wrist base (craft stick and elastic)
• One base flower (cream colored mum)
• Five small roses
• Three sprigs of smaller cream flower
• Leaves
• Ribbon
• Sting of beads
• Floral foam
• Floral wire
• Floral tape
• Tacky glue
• Needle and thread

Step one is to staple of length of elastic to the craft stick unless you have an actual corsage base.

Next, wrap the stick with the floral wire to cover up the staple and hide the wood.

Sandwich the craft stick between sets of leaves and stitch.

Next, using the floral wire, attached a bit of floral Styrofoam to the base and begin to insert the roses.

If it's possible, feed wire through the bigger flower to secure it to the base.  It would not be good to loose the main flower in the middle of the dance.

Once the five roses and the main flower is in place, create five loops of beads.  You could use baby's breath if you have it.  I did not.

Coat the wire in tacky glue before inserting it into the foam.

It's looking good.

Next, add the three sprigs of smaller flowers.  Tacky glue on these stems as well would be good.

And the final step is to add ribbon.  An easy way to do this is to cut a length of ribbon that will allow three loops to be knotted into the ribbon.  Leave about 8 inches loose and wrap the ribbon around the base weaving it in between the flowers.

Secure the ribbon on the corsage with a knot and that's it.

Let the ends of the ribbon hang loose.  I tied another length of ribbon around it all so I would have four strands of ribbon hanging down on the one side of the corsage.

And the corsage is finished.



The rest of the story goes like this....

Boy tells girl about the flowers he picked out for a corsage.
Girl gets excited that she will be getting a corsage for the dance.
Boy forgets corsage at home.
Boy has a lot to learn.

Where it all started

I can fondly remember sitting in the shopping cart as a small child watching in awe as the Kmart Fabric Associate cut yardage for my mother.  Yes, Kmart used to sell fabric.  Oh how I can still hear that bolt of fabric hitting the counter as she unrolled yard after yard of fabric. Thump, thump, thump... So much potential in that puddle of cloth on the counter.  Her fingers would scrape against the Formica surface as she measured and then folded what would become matching Easter dresses for my sister and me.  Right then and there I KNEW I would someday sell fabric at Kmart.

I was three, what do you want?  It seemed like the perfect job.

My love for Singer sewing machines came a little later.  Kmart ceased to sell fabric so I applied at JoAnn fabrics as a summer job in high school.  And yes, that three-year-old was right, it was the perfect job for me.  Now some will argue that taking a job in a fabric store might not be the best idea for a Fabric Junkie.  And what is also not a good idea is being employed by a company that will allow you to cash your paycheck at their store so you can purchase more FABRIC!

JoAnn's sold Singer sewing machines. While I was employed by them during my college years, they set aside a large area of the store just to showcase those machines.  They were so pretty.  And there was so many of them.  And they could do so many wonderful things.  My favorite part of the job then?  Selling Singer sewing machines.  It was part of my JOB to sit there and sew.  I needed to be able to WOW the customers with what this machine could do.  It was perfect, even if I was still making $3.35 an hour, cashing my checks at the store, and coming home with fabric.  I did make commission from every sale which meant... yes... more fabric at the end of the day.

Thus began my addiction to fabric and my love of Singer sewing machines. At present count, there are 8 Singers sitting here.  Two of the 8 Singers don't really count because they belong to my mother. They were dropped off to be repaired and now I think they're just hiding. Of the machines that actually belong to me, two are treadle machines. One was purchased just before I was married because I told my fiance that I've always wanted one and the other belonged one of my mother's friend.  It needed a home.  Two machines are matching crank style machines.  They're great as long as you can get a teenager to turn the crank for you.  One machine sitting here was from a treadle at one time.  Someone wanted to make a table out of the treadle part and discarded the machine. My mother brought that one over because it was left over from her church rummage sale and...yeah, it needed a home.  I'm looking for a motor for that one.  The final Singer is from 1986 and was a gift from my boyfriend at the time.  Turns out, he used my JoAnn fabric store discount and bought the exact machine that I favored and sold the most.

Yup, that boy was a keeper.  Although, one of these days, I'm really afraid I'll come home to find that he's gathered my girlfriends for an intervention. He loves me, that's for sure, but he does tend to struggle to understand why I have so many sewing machines.