March Spotlight - Guiding Fabric Flowers

Guiding Fabric Flowers

Inspired by similar flowers on a facebook group, I decided to use vintage Girl Guide uniforms and buttons to make fabric flowers.

Girl Guides of Canada has made uniform changes over the years. The most recent change in the adult uniform was to replace the "stripes" - striped uniform blouses and skirts designed by Alfred Sung in the 1980s. Over the past few years many people donated those previously loved uniforms to me. What to do with them? I stored them for ages.  

Until I found the Sisterhood of the Flower group on facebook!


I made a few fabric flowers to try it out.

And then inspiration struck!

I could use the stripes!  and the vintage buttons from the uniforms!

And so the Guiding Fabric Flowers were born.

Each flower is as unique as the fabric from the uniform it came from. 

I even opened an Etsy shop to provide a worldwide venue so the Guiding Fabric Flowers could be accessible to everyone and anyone.

 

Before I even announced that the Etsy shop was open, I received an order from Girl Scouts in California!

And now we have expanded the flowers to include the colours of the current Girl Guides of Canada uniforms!

We have: pink (Sparks), orange/peach (Brownies), blue (Guides/Rangers/leaders), and most recently green (Pathfinders).

No, no!  We're not cutting up actual uniforms for these latest additions!

We're actually matching the colour to other previously loved clothing that is non-Guiding, and cutting those up instead. :)

So although the colour is not the actual uniform fabric, its the darned closest match! 

Currently, these colour flowers are only available locally, but we hope to add them to the Etsy shop soon!

Funds raised from the sale of these flowers goes to e-Guiding.com - a website run by volunteer members of Guiding.

e-Guiding.com is home to the famous GuideZone - one of the very first Girl Guide websites on the internet!  As well as the popular TuneGuide - a place to hear Guiding songs!