I saw a camellia on a walk.
I was meeting a friend at a nearby park, and the camellias were in full bloom. Pink petals layered over one another. I stood there for a while, looking at them. I took a few photos, then picked up a single flower that had fallen beneath the tree and brought it home.
The Hard Part Wasn't the Stamens
I decided to make a camellia and got to work.
The yellow stamens came together faster than I expected. I cut them by hand, shaped them, added a few artificial ones, and they looked close enough. The petals were the difficult part. Real camellia petals are thin. Even when layered many times, they remain light and airy. But the wool felt I work with is thicker. Stack the same number of layers, and the flower becomes heavy and blunt.
An Eighth of an Inch
So I started adjusting the size of the petals.
How many layers there should be, and how much the size of each one should change. I reworked the pattern three or four times.
When you're layering petals, the size of each one matters enormously. With some patterns, taking an eighth of an inch off — or adding it — can change the result completely. No one looking at the finished flower notices that difference. They simply sense whether the flower feels natural or not.
I've worked with patterns for long enough that these small distinctions are visible to me. Maybe that's simply how I make flowers.
Working with It Beside Me
The camellia I brought home sat on my desk the entire time I worked.
There are things a photograph can't show you. Exactly where a petal curves. How the overlapping layers catch the light. You have to have the real thing beside you to see them.
And so, a camellia was finished.
Not Quite Done
But one thing keeps bothering me.
On a real camellia, the outermost petals sometimes curl backward. The more open the bloom, the more pronounced this becomes. That single reversed layer makes the whole flower look far more natural.
I'm still thinking about whether to attach the last petals in reverse.