Everything's coming up....

rosettes! Seems everywhere you look, there's flower power. Delicate little blooms are adorning dresses, cardigans, shirts, even necklaces. (The one shown here is from LaViejaTunTun's Etsy shop, and I must buy it. Stat.)

Maybe it's because these flowers take so little effort compared to the real ones (if you could see the empty flower pots all over my front and back yards, you'd know my thumb isn't so green) or because they harken back to ultra-frilly little girl dresses (but with a grownup edge) that I'm so drawn to them. I'm not alone, obviously.

I adore the J Crew cardi with the rosettes along the edges, but I'm thinking I could make my own little rosettes (did it once before with moderate success — sewed a trio onto a black tee) and attach them to a Target cardigan. Cheap and custom.

To make your own rosettes, use a filmy fabric (like chiffon) and cut it into long strips. Fold the strip in half, then hand-sew simple in-and-out stitches along the two separate ends. Once you've sewn the length of it, gently tug on the thread to get the rosettes to ripple and gather. Then, slowly roll up the fabric until it starts to form a rose. You can just stitch haphazardly across the bottom to keep the flower together.

Just beware — use narrow strips of fabric. I kept making rosettes too big. Even going down to an inch-wide strip of fabric yielded really fluffy rosettes. Maybe I'll go down to a half inch to make 'em flatter.

I'll warn you, I thought I'd lose my mind making a half dozen of these several months ago. But, I'm willing to sacrifice a chunk of gray matter if it means saving $150, which is how much that J Crew cardi costs.