Materials:

" Good quality silk flowers and leaves

" Bone rings

" Decorative threads for top

" Neutral or matching thread for bobbin

" Garment or garment in progress

" Rins-Away Stabilizer

" Fray Check

" Machine embroidery or spring hoop

" Darning or freehand foot

Optional Materials:

" Tumble Dye spray fabric dye

" Seed beads

" Fabric Glue

Procedure:

1. Remove the flowers and leaves from the stems. Wash a piece of each to be sure they wash well. You may put Fray Check on the edges if you want more security.
2. If you're making the garment, sew shoulder seams and attach sleeves. Try it on and decide where you want to put the flowers and mark each one with a safety pin.
3. (Optional) Spray dye the area behind the flowers. (Practice before you do it on your garment.)
4. Place the flowers and leaves on the garment, pin the leaves in place, and remove the flowers. Set up your machine for freehand sewing and put the stabilizer behind the area you're sewing. (Drop [or cover] feed teeth, put straight stitch width and length at 0, and take pressure off the presser foot [depending on your machine or foot]). Put your fabric in the hoop. With matching or contrasting thread, tension reduced so bobbin thread won't show, stitch the leaves to the garment, adding veins and following the edges as shown in the sample.
5. Add flowers, and if using layers, do one layer at a time. Do it the same way you did the leaves. If you're not going to add beads to the center, fill in the center with decorative thread, since this will show through the center of the ring.
6. Pick a ring size that will look good in the center of your flowers. Take the foot and ankle off your machine.
7. Use an emery board and smooth our any bumps or sharp parts on the rings. Glue stick one in place. Using a straight stitch, take one stitch on the outside of the ring, real close to the ring, and bring up the bobbin thread. Take a few more stitches, holding the ring in place. Change to a zig zag stitch, 4mm wide for 3/4" rings. Bring both thread tails up so they lay on the ring as you travel around it. Hold the ring down so it doesn't bounce as you stitch. Zig zag all around, with stitches far apart (Illustration 1).
8. Cut off the thread tails and stitch again with stitches close enough together to cover the ring. (Illustration 2) Always stop with the needle down on the outside of the ring when you stop to turn it.
9. When you get back to the beginning again, switch back to a straight stitch and take stitches around the outside of the ring to cover any holes and even out the edge. Jump across the ring and straight stitch around the inside, then finish off as with the others. (Illustration 3) has the outside straight stitched and the inside stitched only part way around.

Add pizazz!
Now you can add more details or decorative stitching to your design! Examine your decorative stitches to see if you have any leaves, curly-cues, feather stitches that would look good. Put them at odd angles, mirror them if you have that option. Program combinations of stitches if your machine will do that. Use decorative threads. Add some dots of satin stitching if you like, or even glitter or dimensional paint.

Make your design truly yours. That's one of the reasons we sew!

(My thanks to Judy Murphy, of Atlanta, for sharing her technique for covering the bone rings.)