Making a Paint Brush Lily flower head

vanessaleevaneyk
Aug 25, 2025
2 min read

Updated: Sep 7, 2025

The spectacular Paint Brush Lily is one of South Africa's most striking bulbous plants. The large, dense, brush-like flower head (inflorescence) consists of numerous scarlet flowers with many conspicuous yellow anthers. Each flower head is surrounded by large, glossy, reddish-brown to purplish bracts.

Objective: render the complexity and detail of the myriad tiny flowers.

A base fabric is created with translucent fabrics in reds and yellow layered over orangey-red, mottled fabric with a final layer of organza to soften and blend the colours. On this, embroidery thread in shades of apricot and orange is couched by machine. A fabric manipulation technique (shirring - tight gathers) creates a texture that suggests the crowded individual flowers. This is all pulled with a gathering thread around the perimeter of the fabric to the back of and surrounding the shape of the flower head in a stiff, thin batting and basted temporarily in place.

The bright yellow anthers are hand embroidered in decreasing length and thickness (number of strands: 4-1) from the foreground of the flower head toward the back. Additional flowers are embroidered in shades of apricot and orange. A smaller ellipse of stiff, thin batting pads the back.

Objective: create the 3 dimensional forms of the enclosing, surrounding bracts.

The bracts are created with taffeta as dimensional appliqué. After drawing and sampling, a template is created and transferred to an interfacing. The 3 bracts behind the flower head are faced and flat. The 2 bracts in the front are faced, shaped with darts and gathered long the bottom edge to fold under, cupping the flower head.

Finish: assemble and attach the flower head and bracts to the background.

The 3 bracts behind the flower head are placed and attached to the background first by machine. The 2 bracts in the front are pinned to the flower head with the bottom edge folding around to the back and hand stitched to secure. The flower head is then hand stitched to the background over the top of the padded flower stem.