Guestpost: A fabric flower made easy

Today, Elisa from "Elia's Bastelecke" will show you something crafty here. She is a girl of all trades and if you are interested in all sorts of creative things and also like gardening, you should check out her blog!
I'm so glad she wrote this great tutorial, it's been a long time since there was craft content on my blog, and this is just the thing! Enjoy!

When Yaga asked for guest postings I immedately felt the urge to help her. Soon I found something to write about without the fear I would take away a topic I wanted to do in my own blog.
So I came up to show how to make a simple fabric flower.

You will need:

- artificial silk or other artificial fibre fabric

- scissors
- a charcoliner or fabric marker pen
- a matching thread and very fine and short needle
- a safety pin or something comparable
- some beads, I used seed beads
- a small candle

Step 1:

Draw and cut some circles from the fabric, make at least 4-6 and make at least 3 different diameters. Here, wine glasses can be very helpful.
The more the diameters vary, the fuller the flower will look like.

Step 2:
Cut 5 times into each fabric circle so to have 5 equal parts, don't cut too far into the circles, though.
Fold the edges of the cuts a little bit.

Step 3:
Light the candle and put it on a table in front of you. Hold the corners of the circles (where you previously cut) above the flame for some seconds, so that they will curl in. ATTENTION: Be cautious not to hold them too close to the flame and not too long because before you know it they can start burning! 
Repeat for all corners and all circles.

Your result for one circle should look like this:

Step 4:
Arrange the flower-shaped former circles on top of each other, the smallest on top and the biggest at the bottom, so that the flower leaves are above the gaps of the circle below. Adjust till you are fully satisfied with the look and sew them together with some stitches.

Your result should look like this:

Step 5:
Sew a safety pin, or whatever you want to use, to the back of the flower, until it is firm. This wil also help your flower to hold its shape.

I used a tiny golden safety pin and it looks like this:

Step 6:
With the thread fixed to the back, push the needle through the and out at the top of the flower and in the middle of it. Thread some beads (I used 3 to 5 at once) and embroider them in the middle of the flower. After you have finished sewing on the beads, secure the thread at the back of the blower, clip the thread and you are done!

If you like, you can squeeze the flower a little bit so it will look more natural.

My result looks like this:

You can use this flower to attach it to your clothes, or a headband, a hat or wherever you like. You can experiment with different fabric colours, different bead colours and sizes and different total sizes as well. Have fun and enjoy your flowers!

I hope you liked my little tutorial.
Elisa from Germany 

Thank you so much for sharing this with us Elisa! I hope we can all help to fill the world with fabric flowers now, wouldn't that be great? ;o)