Thursday, October 13, 2011

Fabric Flower Tutorial

Well, I thought my girls had left the stage of hair bows, but all of a sudden they are all into hair accessories again! Sometimes bows, sometimes headbands that they accessorize with do dads and sometimes clips...like the one I'm about to show you how we made. These are fun and a GREAT way to use up scrap material laying around...and I always have a LOT! If you have knit material, I've done another tutorial HERE for you to check out.

First you'll just need to gather your supplies. Whatever fabric you'd like to use, a piece of felt, your hot glue gun and glue, some scissors and anything that you'd want to use as a template for a circle. You can make your own or just grab anything you might find in your house that you can trace around. A cup, small bowl...you get the idea! For my project, my circles were 2 1/2" and 3" in diameter. Feel free to adjust the size of your circles however you like to get smaller or bigger flowers.


First start by tracing then cutting out all of your circles. I have cut out 8 of each size. To make this process go faster, I folded my fabric in half and then in half again cutting out 4 circles at a time. Next cut out your felt in the shape of a circle, I'd do one the same size as your largest circle.

Take each circle, fold it in half and then in half again.

Your hot glue gun should be heated up. You will glue this in place at the tip. I use a straight pin for this step so that I can get the glue inside the tip of that petal that I'm making and pinch it together and squeeze off any excess glue. Be careful not to burn yourself! Repeat this for all your flowers.

Here is a pic of all my petals.

Now take your scissors and snip a few lines down each petal as I've shown in this pic. This will give your flower a more full and fringed look. Repeat this for all of your petals.

Now we are going to put them onto the felt which will be our backing. I'd lay them out first to get a sense of how they are going to fit. Then move them, put a glob of hot glue in the center and lay them all down tips to the center, petals facing out. Your first layer are your larger petals. If you want to take your time, you can put a dab of hot glue on the back of each petal and take your time laying them down. This is a good idea the first few times as you most likely will start rearranging them spacing them out differently as you go. After making a few, you'll get the hang of it.

Repeat this same process with the next layer of petals. For this layer, I think I ended up using only 7 petals but just place them first so you can get them how you like, and then glue them on.

I always enjoy finding something fun to put in the center. Do you have some fun buttons, rhinestones, something special from Grandma's old jewelry box? Hot glue it to the center.

These are fantastic for both kids and adults. You can add them to hats, purses, tee's, headbands, clips and more. Instead of putting a bow on a gift, maybe add one of these fun flowers instead. Have fun!

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