Quilling Fringed Flower #1: Dandelion Tutorial and Pattern

Quilling Fringed Flower #1: Dandelion Tutorial and Pattern

The first time I saw a fringed flower, I fell in love immediately. I had no idea quilling could take on such dimension. I knew then and there, someday I would buy an electric cutter and make flowers to my heart's content! 

In this video (the first of a series of fringed flowers), I'll be showing how to 

• fringe by hand
• fluff your petals to give them life
• make a smaller bud
• mix colors for a multicolored pom-pom or fireworks
• add them to a free printable card

To celebrate this Valentine's Day, I decided to challenge myself to design a card without the use of any pink or red. I love to listen to Ruth B while quilling, and thought the lyrics of her song, Dandelions, would be a great backdrop for this card. I hope you'll agree this card is just as sweet, even without the traditional colors.

Download the free SVG file here.

Download the free card template here in PDF format.

Download a free PDF of greenery to cut by hand. Simply print this on a sheet of green paper and then follow the lines. I've spaced them out to make it easier to cut with scissors. 

Watch the Quilling Fringed Flowers #1 tutorial video here

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Cut-Coil Quilling for Rounded Flowers

I was buoyed by my quick and happy results from the cut coil technique for pointed petal flowers I showed in an earlier post, and assumed a rounded petal version would be just as easy. I started off well enough, with this flower as my first attempt.

It was a rocky road after that. I found it difficult to achieve results consistent enough to explain my process.

From top left to right, the strips measurements I used were:

1) 3 x 3" strips, not loosened
2) 4 x 3" strips, quilled with a skewer
3) 1 x 1.5, 2, 2.5" strips
4) 4 x 4" strips, uncoiled and re-coiled by hand for a looser coil = too many large rings
5) 3 x 3" strips, flattened curves by hand after cutting
6) 4 x 3" strips
7) 4 x 3" strips, not loosened at all
8) 4 x 3" strips, curves massaged after cutting
9) 4 x 3" strips, curves massaged after cutting

I enjoy these flowers overall, but want to make them more consistently, so they look like a bouquet and belong together, because I'd like to show how to make another monogram using the cut-coil technique in the future.

In example 4, uncoiling and re-coiling by hand is what I do to relax the tension of a coil. After coiling a strip, the tension is quite tight (as seen in the 2nd photo below). I use my tool to uncoil it, stopping just before the innermost coil. Then I re-coil it by hand, controlling the tension as I go to make a looser coil. This is different from simply coiling it loosely the first time, because now the paper has a memory of how it's been shaped. I'm simply doing it looser, and it ends up being concentric, like a conch shell. I show photos in my book, Pretty Quilled Cards, and I'll show it here in this blog when I get a chance to shoot again (I dropped my light bulb and it's shattered now).

I usually coil at the very tip of my tool, but since I wanted to cut the coils, I wrapped the paper further down the tool to have a larger inner circle.

I even used a skewer stick to achieve larger circles. I would save the tightly wrapped coil for the innermost part of my flower as a starting point of the flower.

I think the main difficulty lay in the fact that after the coils were cut, the arcs were so different and needed massaging into a usable curve. The pinched petals in my previous post were already mainly shaped. So this type of flower took more time for me and it was harder to maintain consistency.
Anyway, I hope you have better results than I did! If you do give it a go, I'd love to hear about it. 

Phillippa Reid of Quilliance had already made the leap to this flower and has made a wonderful cut-coil round petal flower, encircled with a mix of techniques and colors. She has also experimented with cut-coil methods previously and has other links in her post worthy of a visit!

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Quilling Tutorial: Outlined Flowers

I'm so excited to show you something completely new!

I have often admired simple line drawings of flowers and wished I could express it with quilling. Yes, I know it's ironic that I didn't have the patience to measure each strip to outline every petal since I just quilled my challenging pink poppy. So it's with great pleasure to tell you a bolt of lightning hit me with this easy-peasy-quicky idea!

Notice the random size of petals? See how the points are not always centered? I love that because I'm innately anal about my precision and this forces me to be looser, more natural, and less controlled.

I'd like to ask you to take a moment and think how I may have done this before having you scroll down to find the answer. Again, I'm LA-A-AZY! So how did I do this flower gift tag in less than 10 minutes?

Thought of some ideas? OK, scroll down to read the answer.

I am going to call this technique "Cut-Coil" because that's all I did. After pinching a traditional teardrop shape (left unglued), I cut the bottom and gently pried open the petals. I used 4 random lengths of scrap pink strips and cherry picked whatever petals seemed to fit best.

I placed the inner coil in the middle, then radiated the petals all around it, building the blossom as I went. Take care to keep the point visually aligned with the center of the flower when you are placing it down. Look at the petal pointing left. See how one side is longer than the other? I deliberately place it so it appears to be an overlapping petal, just as it is in nature. I also opened some medium-sized petals and placing them in the outer rings to make it seem more full.

These two flowers were quickly thrown together, but I'm looking forward to seeing what else can be done with it. Please let me know if you experiment with it as well!

On a side note, I apologize for my watermarked name everywhere, but my name has been removed from my photos and used without my permission for selling kits and services. I am now doing it in a way that's harder for them to remove by blending the shadow into the photo, not just typing my name on top. Does anyone know of a better way to protect your work? I'd really love to know.

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