Scrap Buster: Fabric Flowers

Hi All,

Life has been hectic for me with Summer Break from school with the kids home. Anyone relate? Of course anyone with kids home during the summer knows that your normal schedule of doing things gets thrown out the window for the most part and you have more questions through the day if you stay home with your kids like I do. Not everyone has this luxury obviously and I enjoy it, and yet don’t at the time… relate? I actually posted the video to this tutorial on Facebook on June 8, 2021….man time flies by. Anyway… back to crafting.

This tutorial is about making fabric flowers from some of the smaller pieces of fabric that you have in your stash. After making the video I also made some with piecing some of the smaller pieces of fabric from my scraps together. They turned out pretty cool I think. 🙂 You could also use pieced quilting squares or really any combination of fabric to get your desired look. Play around with this idea and have fun. 🙂 I’ve added some additional pictures at the bottom of this article in a gallery view to hopefully help in visualizing the process when you’re creating your pieces.

Supplies:

Sewing Machine or Hand Sewing Skills (Notions that go along with it)
Fabric
Scissors
Thread
Vase
1/8 inch dowels cut down to size (mine were between 10 and 12 inches long, and it came in a 48 inch length from Lowe’s)
- Another option is to use cooking skewers or chenille stems (I grew up knowing these as pipe cleaners)
Glue (I used hot glue for my preferred method though did also try crafting glue. It worked but took longer to dry.)
Floral tape
Optional –
- On some I added a little yarn to the base of the flower to fill it out and use less flower tape
- On some I added extra hot glue to fill them out more
- You could also use newspaper or tissue paper
- You could also use a “frog” in the bottom of your vase to help your stems stay in place like florist do with real flowers.

Instructions:

Read through all instructions and watch video before attempting so that you understand the concept before moving forward. It will save you some headaches along the way. I watched several different video posts and read instructions from several places to come up with my way, but a common thread was that you had to go through it all to see the final mechanics of how it all went together to make sure there wasn’t a mistake along the way. (I tried a few before reading all the way… don’t make my mistake… I had to use a seam ripper on a few before I learned my lesson again. lol)
Gather supplies
Press fabric to get the crispest look, but you don’t have to.
Piece or cut fabric to get strips. Size depends on the size of flower that you will be looking for. I used fat quarters in the video and cut them mostly to be 4.5 x 22 inches. A few I cut 2.5 x 22 inches to get flowers that looked more like buds getting ready to bloom. You could cut shorter strips if you don’t want your flowers as full or longer if you want them more full. Again play around…. they’re scraps anyway right???
Prepare fabric for gluing to the dowel.
- Leaf – if desired
  1. Place 2 layers of your chosen fabric right sides together.
  2. Cut a rough leaf shape out of both layers of fabric making sure to include a seam allowance. (See video for demonstration.)
  3. Sew around the edge leaving a gap at the bottom of the leaf to be able to turn it right side out.
  4. Turn fabric out.
  5. Optional – Sew vein lines in your leaf. You sew one line from the bottom of you leaf to almost the top leaving a gap. You then sew the branching veins in a V shape over the center line you stitched. (See video for demonstration.)
  6. Another option is to do a top stitch around the border of your leaf.
- Flower Option A (More rustic)
  1. Fold strips wrong sides together finger press or press and along the center line. Open again. Sew a gathering stitch or basting stitch making sure to leave long tails on either end using your preferred method of sewing down the pressed seam line.
  2. Again fold together and sew along the raw edge with a basic straight stitch.
  3. Pull the top thread of your gathering stitch if machine sewing, while holding the other end to gather the fabric together. You’ll need to move the fabric down the thread to do this. You’ll manipulate it until the fabric wants to curl in on itself. (Be careful of how you’re pulling the threads though, if you pull too hard it will break and you’ll have to redo the gathering stitch.) Tie knots in the ends of each side with the top and bottom threads to keep fabric gathered.
  4. You can either then stitch along this same gathered side to lock stitches in place or skip to the leaf section next.
- Flower Option B (Cleaner edges)
  1. Fold strips right sides together and sew a basic straight stitch along one short side and the rough long side using your preferred method of sewing.
  2. Turn tube right side out. Top stitch or ladder stitch to close in other end.
  3. Along one long side sew a gathering stitch or basting stitch making sure to leave long tails on either end.
  4. Pull the top thread if machine sewing, while holding the other end to gather the fabric together. You’ll need to move the fabric down the thread to do this. You’ll manipulate it until the fabric wants to curl in on itself. (Be careful of how you’re pulling the threads though, if you pull too hard it will break and you’ll have to redo the gathering stitch.)
  5. You can either then stitch along this same gathered side to lock stitches in place or skip to the next section.
- Flower Option C (Also Clean edges)
  1. Fold strips right sides together and sew a basic straight stitch along one short side and the rough long side using your preferred method of sewing.
  2. Turn tube right side out. Top stitch or ladder stitch to close in other end.
  3. Glue one end of your strip to the dowel.
  4. Turn the strip as you go to form petals. Gluing occasionally to help it keep in place and keep it’s form.
  5. Skip to step 7.
Glue one end of the fabric strip to the dowel and then wind the fabric around gluing as you go to adhere. This should result in a flower on the end of your dowel.
Optional step: Add material of your choosing to the base of the flower to help the floral tape have a more natural transition from the flower to the stem. (See the video in particular for this step.)
Wrap floral tape around your dowel from the flower to it’s base.
Optional step: Add a leaf or 2 that you’ve created by placing it where you want and either just wrapping floral tape around it to secure or you can add a dab of glue and then add the floral tape.
Create the desired number of flowers for your vase and place them in. You could also add the “floral frog” at this point if you want. I didn’t do this for mine since I had a see through vase.
I did decorate my vase by hot gluing a piece of ribbon around the center to add a little pizzazz to it.