Fabric Rose Tutorial

I made fabric roses for my daughters Easter dress & headband and I loved them so much that I wanted to share a little tutorial on how to make them. These are cute pinned to a dress, or glued to a headband. So many ways you could use these pretty little flowers.

Here is the flower pinned to the Easter dress I made.
 

My little one was too busy building a nest and collecting food for her little birds, then to let me take photos of her. She won't stand still for any length of time.

Here's what you'll need to make your own:
Fabric - 22" L x 2 1/4" W, plus 2 1/4" circle, for each rose
thread
needle
small scissors

Step 1: Cut fabric 22" long x 2 1/4" wide, for each flower. Fold fabric in half width wise, with wrong sides together, and press. To gather, machine stitch 1/4" from raw edge and 1/8" above first stitching line, using a long machine stitch. Pull up your gathering threads, to measures 10" in length (as shown in photo above). Tie a knot in the ends of gathering stitches to secure.

Cut a 2 1/4" circle from fabric remnant to match rose. Machine stitch 1/4" from raw edge as show above.

Step 2: Starting at one end of folded fabric, roll gathered edge of rose, hand-tacking as you roll. It should look something like this (above) when you are done, play around with how loose or tight you roll the flower, it might take a few times to get it how you like.

Step 3: The bottom of your flower will like the one on the right of the photo above. To give the bottom of the flower a nice finished look, take the circle you made, and gather it up to look like this (below)

Then, knot the ends of your thread to secure. And smoosh it down flat like this (below)

Step 4: Finally, stitch the circle onto the bottom of the flower.

And there you have it. Now you can hot glue, or safety pin your flower to a headband. I purchased a set of 4 fabric covered headbands at Target, and stitched my flower on the headband. I also pinned a few flowers to the dress so I can remove them before washing.

Have fun making flowers!

JEN