Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Fabric Flower Tutorial

I want to start with a big thanks to my awesome sis-in-law Alicia for teaching this to me. And for letting me share it with you.

I should have put the picture of the end result right here to start with so you would know what I was talking about, but I didn't. So now you'll either have to skip to the end and come back or just wait for the final product with full anticipation!

This is a tutorial for making fabric flowers.

You will need:

Fabric (amount varies depending on the size of your flower)
Scissors
20"-24" of string
Sewing needle
Hot glue
Button
Felt
Hair clip or pin

1. Start by folding your piece of fabric in half. (Mine was a rectangle shape so I folded it in half width wise to start. )

2. Fold again. (This time I went length wise)

3. And once more! (Again length wise)

4. Check your fabric. You should have 8 layers. Now find something you can use to trace a circle onto your fabric. It can be as big or as small as you want. As a guideline: your final flower will be the size of your original circle.
5. Cut out your circle doing all 8 layers at once.
6. You should end up with 8 circles all the same size.

7. Now string your needle so that you have two even layers of string hanging down and do not tie a not at the end.

8. Okay, now we are ready to start the petals. Take one of your circles and fold it in half (pattern side out).

9. Fold in half again.

10. And fold again. I know! A lot of folding, right? (see steps 1-3)

11. Now, pick up your little triangle and pinch it in your fingers on the raw edges, like this:

12. Okay, this next part isn't complicated so long as I can explain in a way that makes sense. Just look at the picture if my words get you too confused!

Take one side of your flower and fold it back until it matches up evenly with the bottom.

13. Take the other side and fold it forward until it matches up evenly with the bottom. Hopefully it now looks something like a petal.

14. Push your needle through all the layers of the petal about 1/8" out from the raw ends and slide down onto your string.

Repeat steps 8-14 with each of your eight fabric circles.

15. When you've got all of your petals on the string, tie the ends together as tightly as you can. You may need to use your teeth (as I did) or use an extra set of hands (probably the easier choice). Trim off the extra string so there isn't any showing.

16. Finish off your flower by adding gluing on a button. You can use a button cover kit to make a fabric covered button to match or use a coordinating plastic or metal button. Just don't use one with big holes. You don't want your raw ends showing. Now your flower should look like this:
17. To make a pin or for use on a craft skip to 18. To make a hair clip it is suggested that you open the clip up and glue down the top part with a piece of felt over it (therefore gluing the felt and clip to the flower at the same time). The felt will help it stay in the hair better.

18. To make a pin or use on a craft glue a small square of felt to the center of the underneath side of your flower to cover the raw ends. Now you can either glue a pin to the felt or glue your flower directly to your craft project.
I made my first one in 30 minutes. And if I had used Chris's extra hands for tying off my string I could have probably done it in 25. Like I said, easy and fast. And oh-so-cute!
If anyone decides to use one on a craft I would love to see a picture! Email it to askthebestme at gmail dot com.

2 comments:

Sally said...

Not confusing at all. I was going to make one last night, but I was in a bad mood and decided to sit and do nothing instead. Now I'm kicking myself because it would have looked so cute for the girls pictures.

Tiffany said...

I totally just made one of these! So easy and fun, and a great way to use up all the scrap fabric I have laying around. Thanks for sharing!

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