Coming up Roses

You may not know, but love is in the air.  And I don't mean Valentines Day. In fact, a week after Valentines is a special event for me.  I'm getting married.

Yes, I know it's rather late in my life, but I've been on my own now for 13 years and it's been a bit lonely.

In the Spring of last year I met a lovely man and he has asked me to marry him and I've said yes😊.

So we're getting married on the 21st February, which is not long now...

Being a crafty lady (handicrafts that is) I decided I would make my own wedding bouquet after seeing this video...

Of course, it all looked fairly easy on the video...

You've guessed! It was not actually that easy. Firstly, I live in a very rural part of France without access to lots of lovely fabric shops, so the material I managed to find was actually some polyester sheer curtains.  There are lots of those out here. 

But they were not ideal for this project. 

You see, the flowers in the video were made by holding the cut shapes over a tea light until the material curled in the heat and looked like petals. Mine, unfortunately, curled a bit, but also melted a bit so that the petals resembled a flower that had been visited and eaten by a malicious insect. Some actually caught fire and the whole petal was consumed in a fraction of a second.

Also, the material was so slippery that I found it impossible to cut out a circle shape and the 'flowers' were all kinds of weird shapes.

However, I did persevere and eventually produced something that vaguely resembled a rose, albeit that it resembled more a blowsy peony that had been blown about by the wind...

Well, that had taken most of the day, so I decided to go back to my 'easy' craft - crochet - and have a go at making some roses that way.

it was much easier!

i don't know how many flowers I'll need, or if they'll turn OK.  If not, It'll be off to the local florist on the way to the Registry Office!