Have you ever felt the need to be crafty? As in "I just need to make something cute and sweet and fun and I need to do it right now!" I had one of those moments this week. And I totally blame Martha Stewart. I was flipping through one of my Martha Stewart Living magazines (I won a subscription a few months ago, pretty sweet prize if you don't mind being reminded constantly that no one can do it better than Martha can) and saw some sweet and delightful felt flowers. Felt Flowers?!?!?! I didn't know felt flowers exisited before Martha told me so. How did I not know about these little bundles of adorableness? They are so cute and easy to make! So add this to the list of crafty goodness I only have time to do when I am on vacation. Prepare to be hooked on felt!
You will need a sheet of felt in your flower color, a sheet of leaf green felt, matching embroidery floss or heavy duty thread, a needle that can handle felt, good, sharp scissors, a large and small petal template, a leaf template, marker or fabric chalk and glue (I used hot glue).
I found a basic petal template online and drew the outline of the petals on the felt in marker. (This was not the best idea, there was some bleeding from the ink and the petals had to be cut inside the line so the discoloration wouldn't show. Next time I will use chalk or maybe a lighter marker.) I cut out the petals. Next I took five petals and stitched them together with a loose over under stitch. I knotted both ends, but that probably wasn't necessary. When I was done, it looked like this (side note- buy felt and thread at the same time, my best guess for matching was not so great, luckily the thread is hidden, but it still irritates me for some reason.
Once I had all the petals facing the same direction I cinched them together to form the flower. Now, I am pretty sure Martha Stewart can do this with one hand. I could barely do it with 2. It might be helpful to have someone pull and hold the strings while you correct petals that try to twist the wrong way. This one bloom took me a good 15 minutes of wrestling it before it looked right. Once it was perfect, I tied the ends together in a double knot.
Next I did the the smaller petals. Always use an odd number of petals for the best results. For a big flower do 7 large petals, 5 medium petals and 3 small. This set was done just like the first set only they were alot easier to tie together. Yay!
Adorable, right? I ended up making a few flowers this size just because they were easy and cute.
I layered the two sets of petals together to make my flower. Martha probably sews her flowers together, I used hot glue. Way faster. I also hot glued an embellishment to go in the middle and a leaf on the back. Viola!
I'm not crazy about the button, it's just not the right color. I'll probably pull it off and switch it for something a little more flashy. I think it turned out pretty cute though.
Here's some smaller one layer/5 petal flowers-
I think they will look adorable on a headband for a newborn!
Of course, after I took the trouble to figure this out and killed about 2 hours trying to make it all work, I decided to see what the intenet held by way of felt flower patterns and I found this-
Felt flower tutorial for a no-sew felt flower! Hot glue gunners of the world unite!
And after I have had my fill of doing it the easy way, I am going to attempt felt roses- these are so sweet!
http://www.purlbee.com/rose-barrettes/
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