If you make period hats chances are you will be adding silk flower stems to your hats. 100% perfect vintage flowers are often expensive so when you stumble across sellers of vintage flowers that sell seconds or grab bags of flowers do not overlook them because maybe they don’t look so fresh. What is important is that they are indeed wired. In under 10 minutes I was able to take this stem from this to this. Here is how……
This stem had several issues.
- the flower petals were folder and some of them rolled
- All of the leaves were rolled up on themselves.
- The fabric cover on the bud stem was coming unglued.
- One of the leaves was off it’s wire.
- The paper wrap on main stem was coming unglued at the base.
First the flower, with a scrap piece of felt behind the flower I carefully added pins to hold the petals down and in their proper place.
I then steamed the flower for a minute or so. Then let it cool.
Now it looks like this.
And this from the side.
I added a small drop of PVA glue to a plastic tray.
I brushed some glue along the part of the bud stem’s fabric that was coming open. Waited for it to dry a little.
Then pressed it closed.
For the two leaves that still were glued to their wires I painted the back of the leave with some thinned down PVA glue (~50%) over the plastic. With the glue, the fabric of the leaves un-curles and as it dries it stays that way.
For the last leaf I first had to re-glue it to the stem wire with 100% PVA glue. So I straighten the wire.
Brushed the stem with straight PVA glue and then when tacky I stuck the fabric to the wire down the center of the leaf
Then when dry I brushed the leave with the dilute glue as with the other leaves.
The last step was to add some glue to the paper near the bottom of the stem and re-wrap it.
The finished flower revived and ready to use on a hat.