Kanzashi

We're currently living in a hotel while we have 2 levels of hardwood floors replaced from a water pipe bursting under our kitchen sink.  (thankfully, all of this is paid for by our insurance!), so I haven't been terribly productive sewing wise.

 But I brought some handwork to the hotel and I've been playing around with making Japanese kanzashi flowers.  Historically, these are the tiny tiny flowers made folding thin silk squares that are on a geisha's hair ornaments, but the book said to start with 3-4" squares as a beginner.   I also used cotton as an experiment.  (and found in the process that the crisper the cotton the better.) The tote bags are donations for an auction for breast cancer research at work, hence all the pink and white.

Once I had made a few of the larger ones, I made a few with 2" squares as hair clips for a friend's daughter.

The white and pink polkadot kanzashi was the one that I think came out the best (and was the last of the three that I made with the 2 inch squares for petals.  So feeling brave (and having a LOT of time to kill this weekend), I tried using 1" squares as petals.  And immediately went from feeling pretty confident to feeling like a hulking gaijin brute trying to make all the folds with fingers that suddenly felt like logs.  But I got one to turn out mostly ok  but I'm not sure I will attempt it again (and I have absolutely NO idea how anyone could make the folds on anything smaller than a 1" square..  or with a flimsy silk.

I have now made as many kanzashi as I know what to do with and we have another week in the hotel...  it's likely to be a looong week.