I thought you were crazy at first....but it looks like its possible....

A longer lasting Blue Eye flower would be nice, or a teeny tiny iris. I'd buy it.

I don't like to put people off making wild crosses -- you never know what might succeed. In this case, though, I think it would be more productive to try some selective breeding -- while pollinating some of the Sisyrinchium flowers by Irises, just in case.

Selective breeding can be as simple as crossing among a few different strains of S. bellum (if you can find different selections) and raising as many seedlings as you can in the space you have available. Look for any variants with longer or broader petals than average. Save these, cross among them, and destroy the rest of the plants that didn't measure up.

In the next generation you may see some improvement, but repeat the selection process and cross among the best for a few more generations. In this way you should be able to increase the flower size significantly.

A friend of mine did this with Four o'Clocks and doubled the size of the flowers in a few generations.

If you feel more adventurous, try crossing with other species of Sysyrinchium.

Karl

Here is a link that might be useful: Sisyrinchium species

drasaid, I've got the beginnings of a "longer-lasting" blue-eyed grass - it turned up in a mixed population in my yard, and may be inter-specific or may just be a sport. Anyway, it stays open later in the day, at least in moderate temperatures, and as long as it has moisture, it keeps blooming until hard frost knocks it out. It's not tremendously showy, but I like all but one of its habits. (the bad habit is that it is about 8" tall when it starts to bloom, and since it throws keikis and then blooms on them, it keeps getting taller until it flops!)

As far as teeny tiny iris is concerned, there already is one that's a real treasure - Iris gracilipes. Think of the classic (not over-blown) Japanese iris form, with 6 falls and little tiny styles, and scale it down so it fits on a quarter, then put it on a slim stem no more than a foot tall. It's cute, and it comes in lavender and in white.

I had exactly the same idea - did you try?