I was venturing into new territory with this piece: I’ve not incorporated 3 dimensional and detached elements into miniature jewellery designs, so I was a little nervous that it would work out and I could pull it off – not only as a one-off, but as a workable design that could be repeated bespoke.

Here’s how I did it:

I finished all 5 petals. It probably doesn’t show up in my trademark excellent cameraphone pics, but I used various random shades of white to give a bit more depth to the overall flower. Then I cut each one out, trimming closely to the edge.

That’s the reverse of the petal, BTW.

This was actually the most nervewracking bit – trimming close enough to remove frayed edges but not accidentally cut any threads on the slip.

Hooping up again in the ground fabric that would be the base of the piece – black cotton – I used a stilletto to make a small hole in the fabric into which I plunged the wire tail of the first petal:

After each petal I bent the wire tails back and couched over them in a strong silk machine thread before trimming them off.

This is the beauty of this technique: each petal is pliable enough to manouvre individually, so each petal can be cupped and bent to make the overall flower more characterful.

The back finished off and secured, I started to work on the centre of the flower with pale spring green coloured silk french knots:

Finally I used little glass beads stitched on in silk machine thread to represent the individual stamens:

There you go! Like the real thing? I’m very happy with how it turned out.