So today I thought it would be fun to share three things I've made using my felt poppy pattern - I think they look fab with the poppies, but the ideas would work with many felt flower tutorials. You'll find several free flower patterns in my tutorial archive, and I'm also sharing a free flower pattern with my newsletter subscribers this month!
1. Use Them to Make Bracelets.
You can of course use felt flowers to make brooches, headbands and hairclips (in fact, she said in her best salesperson voice, my poppies tutorial shows you how to do just that!)... but have you thought about using them to make bracelets?
Felt flower bracelets are super pretty, especially for summer and for wearing to parties. They're really easy to make and you don't need any fancy jewellery-making equipment, just a bit of narrow elastic!
When you've sewn your felt flower, cut two lengths of elastic to comfortably fit around your wrist. Sew the ends of the elastic to the back of the flower to create the bracelet loop, then cover the sewn ends neatly with a piece of felt. For the poppies I used a piece of felt the same shape as the whole flower to back it neatly and hide all my stitching, but for other flower designs - like these, or the flowers I'm sharing with this month's newsletter - you can just use a circle of felt.
Here are some small poppy bracelets I once made as a custom order for a wedding - each member of the bridal party wore one, and the colours were chosen to match their dresses!
2. Sew Them Onto Stuff.
Okay so this one sounds a bit obvious, but it is my absolute favourite way to make full use of a flower tutorial. You can use felt flowers to decorate store-bought things like purses or cushion covers (or make those things yourself, of course!), or to make little practical gifts like these lavender sachets.
There are lots of people in my life who I'd never sew a flower brooch for as a gift because that's just not their style, but something small decorated with flowers? Sure!
When I was a teenager lavender sachets felt a but fusty and old-fashioned, but with the recent rise of the dreaded clothes moth they've become a thoughtful and useful gift again. They're super simple to make - you'll find instructions for making them from felt in my tutorial archive but they're also great projects for using up small bits of leftover fabric.
Small felt flowers like ones from my primroses and auriculas pattern look great sewn together in clusters on things like pincushions...
... and for 3D flower patterns why not use them to make fabulous flower crowns, decorate a yarn-wrapped wreath, or stitch them to fabric framed in an embroidery hoop to make a bit of floral wall art?
3. Make Them From Paper Instead of Felt.
This variation won't work with all felt flower patterns, but it's perfect for flowers with a 2D design. Cut the pattern pieces from colourful paper or card and use a pen to draw on any details you would have added with embroidery, beads, etc.
Turn the pattern pieces upside down and trace around them with a pencil or pen onto the back of your chosen paper/card. Once you've cut out the shapes and turned them over, any remaining line marks will be hidden. If you want to make lots of paper flowers, draw or glue the pattern pieces onto some sturdy card (e.g. from an empty cereal box) to create templates you can quickly draw around again and again.
You can use paper flowers to decorate so many things! They're perfect for making cards, of course, but you could also use them for scrapbooking, for making art and decorations, embellishing paper bunting triangles for a wedding or summer party... there are so many possibilities! Enlarge or shrink the pattern pieces to best suit your project idea and let your creativity run riot.
Visit my shop for printable patterns, including my felt poppies tutorial!
For lots of free crafty project ideas and step-by-step tutorials, check out my tutorial archive.
3 comments:
These are lovely ideas. I often wonder what crafters do with their own stuff. It often seems that designers don't like or utilise their own makes. Many times I've come across articles about designers which insinuate as much! So lovely crochet cushions are not in their homes, but apparently they should be in ours - or their makes are banned from their own living spaces but live in their craft rooms only because that is where the 'quirkiness' which is apparently handmade to some people lives.
I like to see designers that see practical, or artistic merit in their own designs and do promote them in everyday use. I think it was a well known vintage-look designer who said she doesn't use her own flowery stuff as she likes more streamlined design in her home; it seemed quite disdainful of her own customers actually. Also remember a full time designer of all sorts of stuff who said they had no use for it personally and did not craft for themselves and it was just 'work'. I thought that was sad as her work is lovely. It did put me off though (reminds me a bit of Gerald Ratner and what he said about the jewellery his shop sold.)
Sara
All the ideas are lovely, I just can't pick a favorite, it seems unfair :)
Sara - glad you like the ideas! There are so many fun ways to make use of felt flowers :)
bairozan - aww, thank you! xx
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