Nylon Flower: Textiles

Nylon Flower

For my first textiles post I thought I start with an easy technique that you can use to decorate almost anything. I found this technique about three years ago on YouTube when I was in my first year of GCSE Art Textiles and I still use it now. Without further ado, let’s get started!

First of all you need to gather your equipment. You’ll need:

·   Organza fabric (anything synthetic will be fine as long as it not a polycotton blend)

·   Hot glue gun and glue

·   Pen

·   Candle and lighter/matches

·   Scissors

·   3 round objects that vary from small, medium, large

Before you begin, plug in your glue gun to allow it to pre heat.

 Below is an image with three circles with numbers below them. These indicate how many circles of fabric you will need in each size. Draw around your objects on your fabric and cut out, 3 large circles, 4 medium and 3 small. It doesn’t matter if they are slightly jaggered or wonkey.

For each circle you will need to cut off the bottom side, creating a flat edge which will be the bottom of your petal. The images on the right demonstrate this.

Now the fun begins! I have to warn you this is dangers so make sure you have no flammables near you and also ask you to take caution. I have often burnt myself a few times or set the fabric alight completely, so be careful.

Light your candle and hold the edge of the fabric to the flame briefly and move the fabric edge so the entire edge has been exposed to the heat of the flame. As you will see this will melt the fabric fibres which will stop fraying and will also create texture by the petal curling slightly. Do this to all your petals.

              

This is how they should look:

 

 

 Starting with your smallest petal with the flat edge facing downwards fold the left edge to the centre and put a dab of hot glue on it. Then fold the right side so it covers the glue. This will make the centre to your flower.

Now with your second small petal, again with the flat edge facing down, dab a blob of hot glue onto the over lapping edges of the centre petal and press the right edge of the second petal to glue. Make sure the petals edges are curling outwards. Then glue the left edge to the right edge, like you just did with the centre petal.

From here it is reparation of this process; gluing the last edge pressed down and covering it with a new petal edge.  As you do exactly the same thing with the last small petal.

 

You have now used all your small petals and so you move onto the medium petals. These is the same process as before, over lapping you will begin to understand is the key technique here, however the petal will not (depending on your circle size) go around the whole flower bud, this is meant to happen don’t panic.

Carry on gluing your petals as you have been doing until all the medium petals have been applied. It should look similar to this. If not remember it is art and art is never wrong.

Now for the final layer of petals, the largest of the circles. Like before glue the edge to the edge of the last petal and then glue the other edge to the point in which it reaches around the edge of the flower. It’s important not to stretch the petals during the gluing.

Once all the large circles have been used, that’s it! How easy was that? Using this method you can adapt it to your objectives. Obviously you don’t have to use the same colours as I did, that was just to show clearly the different petals I was using. If you want a fuller flower just increase the number of petals you use. Again it’s art! You can’t go wrong!