Thursday, February 18, 2010

Paper Flower Wreaths

I have mentioned before that my mother made flowers as a hobby. These are the kind made with crepe paper used in that time of the 40's and 50's very frequently by hispanic women, in Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The crepe paper had a certain stretchability that was very useful, especially when making roses. Rose petals were cut and stretched into the shape of real rose petals and then arranged aroung a wire to shape into a rose and tied with a slim wire, usually pulled out of a piece of screen window wire. These flowers and some made like carnations were then arranged into a wreath. These wreaths were used at funerals or taken to the cemetary to decorate tombs, especially on November on the day of the dead.
My mother used to make many wreaths to go visit the cemetary burying places of all her relatives whenever we could go all the way to Escobares, near Rio Grande City, Texas. As a child I used to make some small wreaths about 12 inches round for all the relatives too, all by myself. This is how i learned to make paper flowers, by copying my mother.

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