Fabric Flower Tutorial

Last week when we were done making all of our fabric flowers I said, "I should have taken tutorial pictures." And then I said, "Let's hurry and take some tutorial pictures." So even though my house and the 9 kids in it were a mess, and we were running late for our much needed date night, we decided to hurry and snap some pictures. So thanks to my sister Angela for doing the dirty work while I snapped some photos. Hopefully this will help you figure out how to make fabric flowers of your own, here goes.

First you'll need five coordinating (or the same) circles of fabric. I used a few lids from my spice cabinet to trace out circular templates of various sizes. I traced them onto an old cutting mat (you know it's a plastic flexible cutting board for food and stuff), but you could just as easily make a template out of an old sour cream container lid or something. You want a piece of plastic that's cutable, but somewhat durable. I just hold this onto my fabric and cut around it. This eliminates the need to trace onto your fabric, and it also eliminates pen or marker markings on your fabric. So don't even bother tracing, just hold the template on and use some good fabric scissors. When you use cotton quilting fabric you can do at least 3 layers at a time, and then your circles are cut really quickly. You'll need at least 5 circles, I sometimes used 6, or you could layer more, but five is plenty and looks cute. You also need one circle made of felt, this is the bottom stabilizing layer. Then you'll need a needle and thread. Tie a knot at the end of your thread.

Now you'll need to stick the needle through the bottom of your felt circle until you thread is stopped by the knot you've tied.

Now take one of your cotton fabric circles and fold it in half.

Then fold it almost in half again, like this.

Now hold that onto your felt circle and stick the needle through it and your felt circle, and then back down through the layers again. (I usually repeated this so I'd have two stitches, but one is probably fine, I just like to make sure it's stable).

Now add another circle the same way. This time you'll want it to overlap just a bit on the circle you did before.

Repeat this step until you've used all of your cotton circles and your felt circle is entirely covered.

Once your felt circle is covered and you've got a cute little fabric flower you could stop here by adding a few stitches. But I like embellishment, so we were adding some beads.

Simply thread your needle up through the bead, and then down through all of the layers again.



Once you're done pull the needle and thread tight to make sure your bead is stabilized, and on the back side make 3-5 stitches or so to finish this off. Or I guess you could tie some knots, but I think just repeating the stitch through the flannel a bunch of times will hold it just fine. Then cut your threads and use your hot glue gun to add a barrette, clip, or pin for a broach.

That's it! So easy, right? We're pretty hooked on these at our house right now, they're really quite fun to make. Just turn on some Pandora tunes, grab your fabric scraps, and go to town. If you don't happen to have fabric scraps it wouldn't take very much fabric to make these. You could buy some coordinating fat quarters or 1/8 of a yard to 1/4 of a yard for each fabric that you like. Let me know if you give this a try!

While I was taking the pictures of Angela making this flower I couldn't help but notice all of her beautiful jewelry. The girls in my family kind of have a thing for jewelry. I think it stems from the love that both of my Grandmothers had for bling. Look at Ange's beautiful cameo ring. This is a cameo that my Grandma Redd got in Italy in the 60's (or maybe 70's, 80's? Mom?) . My Mom saved one for each of us girls and had them set into rings for us. I have the one that was my Grandma's actual own ring (um that's because I lost my original one when I was 15 and driving a car that I was unlicensed to drive, and just barely confessed this to my mother a year ago, and received the new one from a sweet forgiving Mother... oops!) and I love wearing it. Every time I think I need a guardian angel with me I just put that ring on my finger and think of my Grandma Redd.



These pictures of Angela's bracelet don't do it justice, but it's so beautiful and dainty, and crafty Angela made it all by herself. She made this using some vintage beads of my Grandmother's as well. She's quite the wire worker, I've yet to get that skill down. Mostly I just buy beads and string them into a bracelet.



Here's some more of Angela's work. See what I mean, beautiful, and painstaking. Each and every part of that necklace was hand wired together. Amazing. She named this the Velma necklace after our same Grandma Redd that I've been talking about. Love you Angela, thanks for your help!