Crepe Paper Flowers – A Blue and Yellow Wedding

All quilt work took a back seat these past two weeks while I began a new project for our dear friends who are getting married this June.  They were high school classmates in the late 60s, and recently met again at a high school reunion. Kyle has been our friend since he and my husband, Gordon, were fraternity brothers in college, and we are so happy that he has found the love of his life, Marcia.

The blue and yellow color scheme is taken from their high school colors, and I offered to make flowers for the wedding.  Yellow flowers were no problem at all, but since there are very few blue flowers in nature, I decided to just ignore that fact and make whatever blue flowers I wanted. Blue roses, blue peonies, blue carnations — the possibilities were endless, and fortunately Marcia liked the idea.  To soften the color scheme, I added some flowers in ivory and a light chartreuse. One thing I hadn’t thought about was the limited color palette of both yellow and blue crepe paper.

After much scrounging, I’m pretty sure I have managed to accumulate every shade of these two colors in every type of crepe paper. However, I’m always on the hunt, so I can’t resist stopping at any new store I drive by (drug, dollar or party) to check their supply of crepe paper streamers. You may not be aware of this obscure observation, but there are subtle differences in streamer color, texture and width from different manufacturers.  I need lots of variety because I am making around 220 flowers for the 16 centerpieces and two large arrangements. Here is a practice arrangement for one of the large vases.   And here are the rest of the finished flowers waiting on my window seat.  I think I have made about 120 flowers, so I’m a little more than halfway done.       Congratulations to the happy couple!