Fabric Peonies with your Silhouette

Have you missed me?

I’ve been busy with a super-deluxe project that I’ll show you in just a couple of days, but for now I want to show you what I made with some delicate fabric using my Cameo to cut it. I bought this pink organza a couple of years ago to make some fabric flowers, but they had to be cut by hand and the edges individually singed with a flame. I made a total of one.

Enter the Silhouette and the new trick I tried in my last post…

I used the same steps as in my previous post, but this time I used Contact brand clear contact paper that I bought at Walmart in the kitchen/shelf liner section. I still made sure the contact paper extended beyond the edges of my fabric so it would stick directly to the mat. This time I used my well-used blade and it didn’t cut nearly as nicely as the sharp new blade I tried last time. I’m sure it played a factor; I’m not sure if trying to cut a large area of flowers was also an issue with not cutting as nicely.  The fabric doesn’t cling to the cutting mat very well.

But I didn’t ruin any of the flowers, and it was easy to fix up the flaws with scissors. Remember the whole thing used to be cut with scissors, so this was definitely an improvement!  I still recommend a sharp blade.

Here are the flower layers all cut out.

Then I took each “petal” of each flower and ran it over a candle flame just enough to melt and curl the edges. Only a little bit is necessary. I was originally introduced to this technique by Rhonna Farrer in a video tutorial.

So now I’ve made a total of two of these flowers in two years. 🙂 I’m more of a paper girl than a fabric girl, but I may get there!

Here’s the link for the Silhouette Studio Fabric Peony file I made for you. The original idea calls for cutting these out in circles with scissors, snipping slits towards the center, then clipping each of the corners. I designed the file so the blade would cut the slits separately in the hope that it would have less chance to catch on the fabric in tight corners.

Pretty simple, but there you go!

And now for a sneak peek at the big project I’ve been working on. It also involves making flowers, but this time out of paper. (You can find the full post here.)

Come back soon to see what I’ve been making, or sign up in the “Subscribe via email” button on my blog to be notified of all my new posts.