Fabric Flowers

A very good friend and I learned how to make fabric flowers for their wedding 14 years ago. All of us bridesmaids had these handmade flowers on our wrists, and I think we also made small bouquets for decorating around the venues. They are so fun to make and each one comes out completely unique, and I became slightly obsessed with them for a time. I made more and more, and had to start trying to sell them at markets to keep the numbers down at home!!

I don't remember where on the web they came from originally, but there are quite a few creative people who do similar things - do a Google or YouTube search to find plenty of videos.

The main rule of thumb with these flowers is the fabric you use has to be synthetic. It needs to burn! Organza is a good material to choose, but I would often also want a more opaque base colour, so I would get other bits of synthetic fabric. We had a wonderful market in the city we were living in at the time, and there were some fabulous fabric stalls that sold it by the metre for a very reasonable price. But you don't need much per flower, so scraps will do just as well.

Choose some complimentary fabrics and colours that you think will go well together. Then you need to decide how many petals you want. The more petals, the more dense the flower will look, and it will curl up into a ball shape. The fewer petals, the flower will look flatter and more spread out. There's no right or wrong to it, and if you make a few over time you'll get an idea of what you like.

I began with 5 petals, and so to start I drew 5 circles in different sizes on some bits of card. Once you have your base circles, make 5 straight evenly spaced cuts from the outside in on each circle. Using these templates, cut out circles of fabric, and cut the slits in the fabric for each petal. You can leave the corners pointy, but I preferred to then cut a small curve on each fabric edge, so you start to get the petal shape showing.