Felt Flower Tutorial

This just MIGHT be a project I can claim as my own! Woo HOO! (until someone else tells me it is theirs! But I am pretty sure I made this one up on my own! (with lots of inspiration from others)

I start with two contrasting colors of felt. I use my trusty pattern that I just free handed and cut out of card stock, one big and one small. Then I stitch around the edge of each flower with some floss of a contrasting color. When I get back to where I started I just tie both ends together to finish it off and I like to make it pucker a little bit, I don't want my flower flat. After stitching around both flowers I either just attach a button in the middle or else make a button cover (I think that is what my mom calls them) by cutting out a circle of coordinating fabric. My pattern is a wide mouth canning lid, hey it works!: (OK at this point I realize I didn't take pictures of the purple flower, this button cover will end up on a white and purple flower not the blue that I took pictures of above, oops)Then I stitch big stitches around the very edge of the circle, the thread wont show, and I like to use floss for the strength, whatever thread is on your needle will work though: When I get to the end I pull it all together and tie the two ends tightly to make it all gather up like this:

At this point I trim all the strings and then hot glue a button to the center of the button cover and then attach the button cover to the two flowers all layered together, with a stitch or two, coming from the back of the large flower and going through to make sure I catch each layer. This makes all three layers secured together, you can even hot glue between each layer for more security. (A lot of times if a baby is not used to hair bows (and even when they are used to them), they will be yanking on it and you don't want it to come apart.)

To attach to the hair band I like to use Velcro dots. The sticky back kind are great, but I always reinforce with hot glue. Glue the soft velcro dot to the band and the hard dot to the flower (I do this because even if there is no velcro dot on the hair band (sometimes they get ripped off by little hands) the flower will still be able to stick to the band with the more hard, coarse velcro dot on it. It can even stick right to the hair pretty well if you want. (just something I have learned)

And there you have it! Now the flowers can be inner-changed with other bands to match outfits.

Also pictured are a couple of daisies I just cut off the stems of a bouquet (from the dollar store). I take the flower apart and glue each layer together, again because babies will pull at these! Then I just attach the velcro dots, coarse dot on the flower soft on the band, and WA LA! Easy Peasy! These are all ready for a baby shower this weekend and maybe took and hour to make!