Shake your bouty Part 2

        Last time I posted I told you all about the bouts I am making. To bring things back up to speed I'm making 6 bouts for the men of the bridal party, an all white one for my groom and  black and white for the rest.  These are burnt petal flowers and I will admit I burnt a little more than the petals in this process, ouch!
I will tell you that eventually your tea light will stop having a good flame and instead of powering through that just get another tea light. You don't realize how slowly the fabric is burning compared to when you first started and had a decent flame going.
 
       You've cut out your circles, burned the edges, nested them together and secured them with a few stitches. Now my friends, it's time to embellish. In part one I showed you how I used pearls and black gems for the middle of my fabric flowers but now I reveal the rest. Feathers! Please, please hold your applause, it's exciting I know.

       I've never worked with feathers before and I read the techniques on the back of the bag before I started. They are nice enough to show you like 8 ways to shape a feather, one of which I mastered. I began by ripping of the downy part with my fingers but broke my second one, so I wised up and used scissors for the rest to maintain the long "stem" I guess is what you might call it. I need that part to secure to the back of my flowers. I recommend removing the down over a sink or a trash can as it will go everywhere.

     Once I had my feathers looking good I placed them on the back of my flowers and secured them with a few stitches before adding a finishing touch of hot glue. This is my technique for most things as you'll soon see.  Next step, cut out circles of felt and attach a pin back. Again, I gave it a few stitches and then hot glued that mother on there.  Last but not least stitch these circles to the back of you flower making sure you only stitch through one layer and that the stitches are hidden. I guess you could hot glue them on there but I'm paranoid about them falling apart so I'm making them bullet proof.

                                                    * All personal photos*
      And there you are! It's super easy and more than cost effective! Here's the break down.

Black fabric- free, old shirt from my closet
white fabric- 2$ for half yard, I probably used 5 cents worth in this project.
Pearls-on sale for 2.79
black gems-on sale for 2.79
feathers-used coupon, paid .80
needle and thread- already had
hot glue and gun- already had
pin backs- a box of about a million, 2.99

This all adds up to 11.37, we divide that by 6 bouts and it's 1.89 per bout. Plus, I only used a small portion of all the supplies I bought.
   Have you ever made fabric flowers? What about paper flowers? Think there's just no comparison to the real thing?