How-to: Simple Fabric Flowers

Last year for Chelsea's wedding, I (along with my mom and a couple of friends I begged to help) made 125+ fabric flowers. They were part of the table decor, looking quite lovely around the centerpiece cakes. For Camille's wedding, it seems we'll be doing a bit of reusing (stay tuned!), but I wanted to share the quick tutorial since I took tons of pictures last year.

Materials and Supplies
Fabric for flowers - it helps if the fabric doesn't have an obvious front and back to it, since both sides of the fabric are visible
Scissors
Hot glue
Optional - Other "layers" of fabric, such as tulle, organza, etc.
Optional - rhinestones, pearls, buttons for the center of each flower

Steps
1. Cut out three circles all in different sizes. You don't have to be too precise here, although you do want the edges of your circles to be nice and neat. The example I'll show is a 5 inch circle, 3.5 inch circle, and 2 inch circle.

 2. Take your largest circle and fold it into fourths. Crease well.

 3. Open it up and place a thin layer of hot glue along one of the folds.

4. Fold it so that the glue is on the inside. Press it, let it cool, then open it up. Do the same thing to the other fold. This one will be slightly more difficult, but it'll work.

5. Your flower should already be taken shape. 

 6. Do the same with the other two circles so that you have three of these flower pieces.

7. Take your largest flower, place a dot of glue in the center, then quickly layer the next largest flower on top of it, placing it so the folds don't line up.

 8. Do the same thing to the third layer. (Note: You could have as many layers as you'd like!)

9. If you'd like, place a tiny dot of glue in the center and add a rhinestone, pearl, button, or some other cute little piece.

Once you have the basic idea, you can add to your flowers by throwing in extra layers of other materials, such as tulle or organza. We made all different kinds for the wedding, dusting some of them with glitter or adding extra bling. It didn't matter that the edges were unraveling a bit - that gave extra character.

I've used up a number of these flowers, pinning them to throw pillows, bags, even throwing them in large hurricanes for quick decor. For Camille's wedding, we'll be adding some color!!! Time to get out the dye again!