I'm working on some gumpaste calla lilies I need for a wedding this Saturday. I've already made up all of my pistils and allowed them to dry, but as I was attaching the petals today, I noticed that the floral wire is coming out of a lot of the pistils when I apply the petals. I think part of the problem might be that I rolled the pistils out on my surface again once the wire was inserted to correct any crookedness caused by inserting the wire. I think that may have made the hole where the wire is a little looser than necessary. The other thing is that I'm using plain green floral wire, but I'm wondering if I need a fabric covered wire instead?

Can anyone please give me some guidance? I'm afraid the wires will all fall out on me when I proceed to insert the flowers into the cake!! In the meantime, I'm trying to systematically go back through them all and reattach the wire with more gumpaste glue.

Thanks for any advice you can give!!!

Did you make sure the wire was coated with "glue" before you rolled the gumpaste on the wire? Also, it might help if you made a teeny hook at the end of the wire, so the gumpaste has something to grab HTH!

Fabric-covered wire works better for some things. For really delicate things it's sometimes too thick. One way to do it and be sure it doesn't fall out is to heat the wire (not fabric-covered, obviously) in a candle flame and then insert it into the gumpaste.

Also, don't move things until they're totally dry and you'll have more success with it staying on the wire.

Guess it would help if I included details!! It just occurred to me that the night I did this, I TOTALLY forgot to apply the "gumpaste glue" (gumpaste dissolved in water) BEFORE I inserted the wire, so I took them all out, brushed on the glue, then re-inserted. Looks like that didn't work too well! Don't know why I forgot about that screw-up.

I just went back through all of them, and for any that were loose, I rolled a tiny ball of gumpaste into a straight line and snaked it/pushed it into the hole with the wire, then applied glue and re-inserted for the second time. We'll see if that holds. I guess worst-case scenario, I could start over again just to be sure they don't fall off the wire, but at this point I have about 35 pistils with questionably stable wire.

Thank you guys!!

When we used toothpicks in the Wilton courses with the roses I'd find the toothpicks would get loose since gumpaste shrinks a little when dried. What'd I do is pull the toothpicks out, dip them in piping gel and then stick them back in. The piping gel has more 'body' than gum glue at this point, so it will help fill in the excess space and when it dries it should hold.

You do want to use covered wires, either bought covered or use flower tape. Gumpaste doesn't stick to the wire too well.

And I love the heating up the wire trick. I recently used it on the calla lily center because I didn't have time to let them dry. I did heat my covered wires with out problem, so that can be done.

Thanks so much for the tip TexasSugar! This is my first time doing them and I followed Edna's tutorial, but I wasn't sure if she had used covered wire or not. I checked them this morning and they all seem to be intact, put I have piping gel on hand just in case - great idea!!

Thanks so much guys!!