Hello!  We are Bill and Pat Chappel.  We have undertaken the ages-old craft of fashioning realistic-looking flowers out of twigs and branches taken from trees.

There are stories of flower-carving coming from the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee.  We have had people share stories about flowers being carved in the  Appalachians, in Europe, and even Japan.  Some people remember their grandfathers making flowers out of twigs.

Bill learned about flower carving in April of 2004 from his cousin who saw it demonstrated at a wood carver's convention.  Dying the flowers and putting them into arrangements is a new twist on the old craft.

Bill always is busy throughout our shows demonstrating carving small flowers which he then gives away.   People love to watch him 'make' a flower and he usually has a group of people around him while he is carving.  One gentleman watched closely, went home and tried it, and came back the next day to tell Bill, "it's not as easy as it looks!"

Bill makes carving the flowers look very easy but then he gets lots of practice carving flowers for hours everyday to keep up with what we need for the shows.  We usually take 125 or more arrangements to each show with an average of 12 - 15 flowers per arrangement - that's a LOT of flowers!

The arrangements you see at Flowering Twigs were carved by Bill and dyed and arranged by Pat.  When Bill gets far enough ahead he also helps with the dying and arranging.