Kanzashi flowers

Blogger went a little bit crazy, was down for a good long while and "unpublished" this post yesterday. Mpff! I wanted to share with you my latest fabric flowers. I've been trying my hand at the Japanese art of Tsunami Kanzashi which is to make flowers with folded fabric (traditionally silk). I'm a humble grasshopper in this technique. The marvels created by Kansashi masters are incredibly intricate and stunning. Of course the technique has evolved and you can make really pretty Kanzashi flowers with quilting cotton, which mean they have to be fairly large but I want to learn the traditional way.

In a traditional flower, the petals are folded with 1" squares of silk. I found very light weight satin to try out the folding, which allows me to go much smaller than cotton. My squares were 2" , which makes them HUGE. The flowers I made are still pretty uncomplicated and you can see the petals are not very regular.  Once I get better at the folding technique, I will try to go smaller. Then maybe more complicated designs.