Lily

Lisa Withers

United Kingdom

• Petersham Cockade Project by Michelle@Petershams

I looked through loads of articles but realised I had to narrow it down as I have left it late to start the headpiece. So I limited it down to ‘ribbons’ and found this article ‘Petersham Cockade’, in issue 123 by Michelle Osborne, which was my spring board for my piece.

To begin with I just played around with any coloured Petersham ribbon and started folding. I loved the effect. I experimented with other types of ribbon too. I had a roll of stripy single sided ribbon and gave that a go and soon realised to make a cockade you need a doubled sided ribbon as the underside of the ribbon will be on show, unless you turn it over which gave it a different effect. I played about with different widths of ribbon too. Learning a new skill I believe practice really does make perfect as the more I made the neater they became.

I love colour, it makes me smile, so I decided to try and make the most colourful headpiece I could. Something to make the wearer feel unique, fun and bright . I made a selection of Cockades in fuchsia pinks, stripy, and yellow ribbon. I used a straw button base in fuchsia pink, and covered the headband in matching pink ribbon ( another fab article by Michelle in issue 123). I started to pin each cockade to the base but I did not want them to be flat to the base, I wanted them to be more 3D, so I arranged the cockades over the base but had them bunching up so they created depth. Once all the cockades were in place I stitched big coloured pearls to the centre of each piece .

• Button Straw base
• Petersham ribbon in pink and yellow 2.5cm and 4cm wide
• Stripy ribbon 4cm and 1.5cm
• 14mm pearls in lime green, pink, purple, turquoise and yellow
• Pink Spray paint
• Headband
• Plastic comb

• Petersham cockade/ribbon folding
• Covering a headband with ribbon