Layered Felt & Fabric Flower Brooch

It seems another fabric flower tutorial was well overdue.  This one uses felt, fabric and lace, making it a super sweet flower brooch.  Don't be frightened non sewers..... it's an easy no sew project and the perfect addition to a jacket, necklace, hairband, hat or purse!

This project is great for using up scrap fabrics or upcycling old worn garments into something new.  Come along and I'll show you how it's done!

I decided to use some scrap muslin fabric, light grey felt and some cotton lace trim. The felt gives the flower stability, the muslin gives it a soft scrappy look and the lace...some femininity.  I would avoid using overly stretchy fabrics for this project.

Pin the felt to the muslin and cut a circle, maximizing as much of the felt as you can.  The felt piece I used was 9x11 inches.  So the circle ended up about 9 inches in diameter.

Cut the circle into a spiral, making sure the spiral is about the same width of your ribbon, slightly narrowing as you get close to the middle.  When you get to the middle, leave 1 1/2 inch diameter section uncut.  Unpin so the layers of muslin and felt are no longer together.

To give the flower a softer feel, I scalloped the edges of only the felt so it would mimic petals.  Do this by free hand cutting some arches all the way around the spiral, as far into the centre of the spiral as you can.  Try not to cut away too much fabric.

I didn't have enough of my lace to completely match the spiral, so I just used what I had and started gluing it to the felt, from the middle.  I bunched the lace as I glued it on, so that it wouldn't mess up the shape of my spiral.   I also ended up cutting about 8 inches of the tail end of my spiral off.  I found this worked best since I didn't have enough lace to cover my entire spiral.  If you do, you probably wont need to cut any off.  I cut the same amount off of the muslin layer.

Starting at the tail end of the spiral, I layered the muslin on the felt, opposite side from the lace and started rolling the tail end, always keeping the inside edges even (this will be the bottom of the flower).  Roll the fabric around and around, until you get all the way to the middle circle part of the spiral adding a dot of hot glue as needed along the way as needed.  The inside circle part will become the base.

Flip it over, add a good pile of hot glue and press down the last bit of the fabric to the bottom of the flower.

Once the glue is dry, take a pin back and adhere it to the back of the flower with a bit of hot glue.  To make sure it's extra secure, cut a scrap of fabric to cover the pin back and glue it down to the fabric.  Hot glue will stick better to fabric then metal.  It would be tragic to loose such a pretty piece because of glue failure!  I placed my pin near one edge so I could open and close it easier.

Pin it to whatever you want to spruce up!  You could add a pretty jewel or a vintage button to the centre for some added sparkle too.

If you want to make flowers of different sizes, it's easy to do.  Keep in mind the following when making your own rolled flowers;

*The wider you make the sections of the spiral, the taller the flower will be which means it will stick out more.  The narrower, the flatter the flower will be.

*The diameter of the fabric circle you start with will also determine the size of your flower.  Smaller circle = smaller flower.  Bigger circle = bigger flower.

*To make a flower with a taller middle, taper the width of your spiral, making it thinner from the outer part to the centre.

*To make an even, flatter flower, taper the width of your spiral, making it slightly thicker from the outer part to the centre.

*Experiment with the outer edge of the spiral by scalloping the edges slightly or dramatically to achieve a different look.  Try pinking shears or other decorative scissors, or leave it straight cut too.

If you have never tried making a rolled felt flower before, it's very easy.  Try rolling one up without gluing to get the feel for it.  You can always undo it and try again.  Once you see how simple it is, you'll be hooked like the rest of us flower making fanatics!