How to make 6000 fabric roses (more or less!)

In 2011, myself and my good friend Becki organised a Mad Hatters Charity Tea Party. Four years later - and we are still at it! The costumes we currently have I made last year, after we decided to invest a little more into them to make them last longer.

The White Queens dress was a major highlight and learning curve when I was making the costumes for The Mad Hatters Charity Tea Party. It taught me that not everything can be rushed and the most beautiful things take a bit of time and patience. 

Made up of 12m of silver duchess satin, 5m of lace and countless handmade roses, the costume took its pride of place amongst the Mad Hatters team on Saturday 27th July 2013.

The dress overall took six weeks to make and a large amount of the time was dedicated to the handmade ribbon roses which adorned the dress. After a while, I found these to be quite therapeutic to make.

With an enormous amount of thanks to volunteers, family and friends the dress to date holds approximately 6000 roses with more being added at steady intervals for future events. Within a number of the roses on the White Queen's dress I also glued beads, and tiny plastic crockery.


Below I have written a step-by-step recipe of how to make a single rose.

These fabric flowers can be made in all different sizes and colours. They would look beautiful decorating almost anything - from a dress to a pair of shoes. Maybe you'd like to personalise your bag, or make a hair piece - the possibilities are endless.

I hope you enjoy making them as much as I did, and if you do make some, please post photos of your final creations on my Facebook page, its always wonderful to see everyone’s creative talents.


How to Make Fabric Roses

1. Cut a length of ribbon approx. 30cm-40cm long (depending on the size of the rose)
2. Fold the ribbon in half
3. From the half way point turn the ribbon so that it sits at a 90-degree angle
4. Fold underside of ribbon over the top of the upper ribbon, this shall create a boxed 90-degree angle
5. Repeat process 4 until you have 2.5cm of ribbon left
6. When you reach the end take the under ribbon and loosely wrap it around the upper ribbon to form a tail.
7. Pull the upper ribbon (tail) through the wrapped ribbon gently and the ribbon shall start forming petals.
8. Once the required amount of petals are formed cut of any excess tail ribbon.
9. Burn bottom of ribbon to hold or if using a non-synthetic fabric, sew ends together.

Is greed always such a bad thing?

Is greed always such a bad thing? For my 7 deadly sins project I can guarantee it was not the case.

The 2012 Seven Deadly Sins project started of as a simple corsetry project to help myself gain a greater knowledge of corsets and how they’re made for future bespoke costume orders. After talking with Evad Photography, it quickly expanded into a full costume range, hair and make-up and photo shoot.

Greed is the sin of desiring and pursuing material good and possessions, so naturally golden colours had to be the main base of the costume with heavy jewellery incorporated into the outfit. As Thomas Aquinas once wrote, "Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things." 

The wonderful Daria who modelled greed pulled the character off with style and flair, by showing the objects that humans most treasure. Her initial costume design was quite complicated, with a fully flared wrap around slit skirt to go with the corset, jewellery and accessories. After talking with the model we found several compromises that worked with the character.

I made Daria's corset from a medium coutil, with an outer layer of patterned satin, which shone when hit by the light at the right angle. I chose this material specifically as I felt that the occasional glint of gold showed wealth well. I gave the corset a rounded top and a slightly tapered bottom that were both bound with gold coloured bias binding. The corset had a fully functioning busk and each of the boning channels contained either flat steel bones or spiral boning that were tipped for comfort.

The skirt was originally designed to be fully flared with a long front slit, however at the time Daria was under the age of 18 and I personally felt this would be an inappropriate design for her age. To combat this problem, I chose to manipulate the skirt once on the model, to create a draped effect that preserved modesty. A tiara, necklace and bracelets were added to portray the indulgence of the character and gold coloured shoes completed the outfit to show the need of material possessions.

Evad Photography spent an entire day working with the 7 models and when it was the turn of greed, he chose to use various lighting effects and backdrops to enhance the costume and model. A long day and several weeks of work were put into the costumes, and it was wonderful to see the final products that represented each sin and that the models enjoyed themselves.

All photos (c) Evad Photography