Book Review: Making Silk Flowers

 

Finally! A contemporary book on the art of making fabric flowers-- the full-color 200+-page hardback title Making Silk Flowers by Anne Tomlin (Crowood Press). I am entirely serious that my prior go-to reference on this topic has been the 1926 title by Georgina Kerr Kaye, Millinery for Every Woman, which positioned itself as a manual on the art and craft of millinery with an extensive section on fabric/ribbon flower-making.

This book is less of an instructional manual as it is almost an artist's manifesto--Tomlin details how she analyzes botanical specimens and replicates them in fabric, and the reader may use that information to inform their own practice. She discusses the tools and techniques she uses, delves into colors and dyes, and then dives into copying flowers arranged by the season in which they bloom.

In a similar structure to the Kaye text, Tomlin sequences her construction method information by flower type--lily of the valley, rose, pansy, etc., taking the reader through each step of her process with full-color detail photographs (unlike the hand-drawn monochrome illustrations of Kaye's book). 

For each flower covered, there's a stuning color photo of it in its final place adorning hats or in decorative vase arrangements or simply as a single flower stem. She separates out Leaves into a standalone chapter, which is useful in that not all faux flowers need leaves and vice versa.

Tomlin includes an appendix of her hand-drawn petal/leaf pattern templates, a helpful glossary and resource list, as well as an index.

Highly recommended reference volume for millinery studios and couturieres/decorators with an interest in such things.