SECTION 8 -FRINGED FLOWERS

Fringed flowers, although they have no equal in nature, look nice to add a 3d element or as mini snowballs (Hydrangeas) ... pom poms.. and if made with thinner strips but using a very long length, you can make short "turf like" areas that you can use for example in the middle of sunflowers... as fur on a quilled animal or even as a patch of grass!

• With centres of shorter fringing or a tight roll you can make daisy like flowers of any size. 
• Play around with length and width and also more than one colour at a time.

Making a fringed flower with scissors:

Fringed flower with no centre:

• Take a strip of paper in chosen colour of a width of 9mm for this exercise.
• Using sharp small pointed scissors make a cut into the strip ( near the end) at a 90 deg angle to the length of the strip until the tip of the scissors reach about 1-2 mm away from the opposite side of the strip.
• Move scissors along a TINY amount, close as you can without cutting off the tag you just made, and make another snip in exactly the same manner.
• Repeat along length until you have several centimetres to play with of fringing. (Diagram 1)

Diagram 1

Use a SLOTTED QUILLING tool or QUILLING NEEDLE ( glue after a couple of turns if you use the needle tool) and wind on the fringing with the attached ( uncut) side of the strip at the bottom when looking at it on your tool. Continue winding on evenly as if you were doing a tight roll and glue the free end to the rest of  the roll also as usual. 

Take a QUILLING NEEDLE or even a fine knitting needle and CURL the outer fringing sections OVER/UNDER to make a button shape... arrange the rest of the fringed bits as you like to shape into a flower head.

The flower below is a variation of that, I used 2 different colour strips. Snipped their fringes and then attached them together at the end and wound them onto my tool as if it were a tight roll TOGETHER.... when unfurled it makes a duo colour flower head.

Fringed flowers with a centre:

I used metallic paper for the fringing on the outer sections and a tight roll in a narrower width strip for the centre.

• Make a tight roll for the centre and then attach with a small amount of glue, the fringing ( made as above) whilst roll is still on tool and continue winding in the same direction until desired size is created. Glue fringed end down.
• You can also attach the paper strip for the tight roll centre to the readymade fringed section and roll up all in one, rolling from the tight roll ( the flower centre) end first of course! (Diagram 2)

Diagram 2

• Curl over the outer fringing to reveal flower centre and remove from tool.  Ready to use in project.
• For a shorter "pile" of fringe as the flower centre.... or 2 tone.. see diagram 3

FRINGING MACHINES -Please note that ParchCraft Australia does not manufacture nor sell a Quilling fringing machine, information for general interest only.

There are specially designed machines for automating the process of cutting fringes in paper strips. They are quite expensive and work on an up and down lever capacity to lower and raise a blade as it feeds the paper in from the other side. Unless you plan to do a lot of fringing indeed, the scissors method is just fine for most people.

They are available to do 2 jobs, usually as separate machines. This is what one looks like... it can be attached to a wooden base to make it a little easier to use.

I suggest you now go ahead and do PROJECT 2 - the fringed sprig of Acacia wattle.

Then.. go onto SECTION 9- WEAVING PAPER

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