To simulate the band of straw flowers on an extant hat in the V&A I made these 3D flowers out of flat straw.
Dandelion type flower
These are ironed straws not backed with matching color pieces of silk taffeta. I cut several 2 3/4″ lengths.
I folded iin half.
I glued it to a piece of fine wire.
I wrapped 3 or 4 around that and bound the end with fine thread covered stem wire.
I used my awl to split the the straw into many narrow sections.
I keep dividing them and gently folding then back until it looked like this.
I cut some spike leaf shapes out of some fabric backed green ironed straws. to make 4 calyx shapes pieces.
I bent the shapes to the back near the end wide end.
I used a curling iron to shape the long upper part of the leaf shapes.
I covered the base of the flower below the thread covered wire with florist tape down the stem.
I glued each calyx to the base of the flower over the upper part of the tape.
Petaled flowers
I first created double sided pieces of straw by using iron on glue to glue lengths of straw together all of the flowers after this one are done with double sided straw. I then cut these dog bone shapes out of the double sided ironed straw.
I used my awl to poke a hole right in the middle of the shape.
I used a fine 1/4″ bore curing iron to curl the shapes in half .
Then also shape the tips of the petals.
Each flower is made of a center of one piece of yellow straw wired to the middle of a 4 or 5″ piece of wire and then the straw is split with an awl as for the dandelion flower.
Then the two sets of double petals (dog bone) are slipped behind the yellow through the hole. They should be glued at right angles to each other.
Spiky petaled flowers
These are also double sided straw. This flower is similar to the other but the end of the petals were first cut straight across.
Then I cut some “V” shapes out of the petals. I used the curling iron to fold them in half and the also curl them around.
I added the petals three of them behind a yellow center.
This is it with two.
Here are all three added waiting for florist tape.
This is a sort of mass production of elements before I started to put things together. I made both white and yellow flower centers.
Large long leaves
I used fabric backed ironed straws for one layer of the leaves. Then backed the fabric side with some iron-on paper back glue on one side
I glued the cut out leaf to another non-backed ironed straw with an iron. Making sure there was a wire with a loop at the end that goes between the layers so it will not be easy to pull the wire out after the layers are fused.
The leaves get shaped in the large 2″ bore curling iron after they have florist tape on there wire stem.
Putting things together
These are all the flowers and leaves I used to make the wreath that slips around the crown.
I distributed them into 7 groups of 4 to 5 elements each.
I wired them together going from one end of the circle to the other. I clipped the length of the stems where needed.
Finished wreath.
The wreath can be sewn to the hat or the flowers can be glued to a narrow 1/4″ straw colored ribbon that can be tired on to the hat or could be removed.
If you look closely you will see a small yellow bow in the center back of the crown. That is what I glued the flowers onto so the wreath could be removed. You can find a pattern for the hat box under the “free downloadable” menu.
