How to Make a Blue Trailing Jasmine Hairpin — Full Chanhua Tutorial
Making a blue trailing jasmine hairpin from start to finish — dyed silk floss wound over copper wire, the Chinese craft of chanhua.
Fifteen centimeters of stem, and every bloom is wound separately. That is why one piece takes six to nine hours: there is no shortcut, and no machine does this.
You'll need: scissors, a lighter and a cylindrical pen. The lighter seals the thread ends so the silk does not fray, and the pen barrel is what you shape the petals around.
A silk flower hairpin, made from the first cut to the finished pin — dyed silk floss wound strand by strand over a shaped copper-wire frame. The craft is chanhua (缠花), and nothing about it is printed or molded: every petal is wrapped by hand.
## What happens in this video
The whole method, in order: cutting the paper templates and the wire, wrapping the silk evenly around both, sealing the thread ends with a flame, shaping each petal, and fixing the finished piece onto the hairpin base.
## What you need of your own
Three things: scissors, a lighter, and a cylindrical pen. The lighter seals the thread ends so the silk does not fray, and the pen barrel is what you shape the petals around — the small brush that comes in a kit is too thin for it.
## How long it takes
A first piece runs from four to seven hours for a compact design such as the hydrangea hairpin, up to six to nine hours for a long stem like the trailing jasmine. Most of that time is the winding. You can stop at any point — wound silk holds its shape.
## Why the technique is different
Chanhua is three-dimensional. It is closer to making a tiny silk sculpture than to sewing or embroidery: the silk is not stitched into fabric, it is wrapped around a wire skeleton until a flower appears. The same method builds every design in the shop — the wire frames decide which flower you get.
## Read more
- What chanhua actually is: /blog/what-is-chinese-silk-flower-art-chanhua
- How the silk is wrapped around the wire: /blog/how-to-wrap-silk-thread-around-a-wire-frame
Wound by hand in Guang'an, Sichuan, by Hong.
A blue phoenix brooch, wound from dyed silk floss over a copper-wire frame — twenty-five quiet minutes of chanhua, with no voice-over anywhere in it.
What you hear is rain, quiet music, and the work itself: silk against wire, scissors, a lighter. There is nothing to follow and nothing to remember. Watch it while you study, while you work, or while you fall asleep.
The brooch is built petal by petal and every petal is wrapped separately. Nothing here is printed and nothing is molded — the whole piece is wound by hand, and it takes six to nine hours.
Wound in Guang'an, Sichuan, by Hong.
Making the leaves for a Chinese chanhua jasmine hairpin — real time, no cuts, no speed-up.
This is the part most beginners find hardest: keeping the two strands of silk parallel, wrapping firmly enough, and shaping the leaf at the end. The tutorial goes slowly through every step, from cutting the wire to burning off the fuzzy edges.
**You'll need:** two cardstock leaf templates, a piece of wire about 18 cm long (0.4 mm is easiest for beginners), and about two meters of silk floss, folded to work with a double strand.
Everything used in this video is in our [blue trailing jasmine hairpin kit](/products/chanhua-trailing-jasmine-hairpin).
