Crafting With Felt Flowers: Floral Crown Tutorial

Sew a pretty felt flower crown or headband!

Throughout this week I'm sharing ideas for crafting with felt flowers, and ways to re-use the flower templates from my April Felt Flowers Wreath tutorial. Today I'll show you how to make a floral crown that's perfect for parties, festivals or even weddings.

This tutorial was originally designed for The Village Haberdashery's blog and was created using felt and other craft supplies from their shop.

You will need:

- The flower templates from my April wreath tutorial
- Wool felt in assorted colours
- Embroidery thread to match the felt
- 1 metre ribbon
- Sewing needles and pins
- Sewing scissors or embroidery scissors (these are great for cutting out detailed felt shapes!)

To make the floral crown:

Use the flower templates to cut out the flower pieces from felt (see step 1 of the wreath tutorial - I’ve used different colours to make the crown, but you’ll need the same quantities as listed to create seven flowers). Arrange the pieces, as shown.

Stitch the flowers with half strands of contrasting embroidery thread (so for six-stranded embroidery thread just use three strands), sewing radiating stitches from the centre of each flower. I stitched nine stitches for each of the larger flowers, and six for the smaller flowers. If you like you can also add some extra stitched details to decorate the flowers, as I did. For extra decoration you could add buttons, beads or sequins to the flower centres.

Cut a metre long piece of ribbon, cutting the ends at an angle to help prevent fraying. Pin the flowers onto the ribbon starting with the largest flowers in the centre then working outwards.

Sew the ribbon to the back of the flowers, using running or whip stitch in matching sewing thread. Remove the pins as you sew and take care to sew into the felt but not through it, so your stitching won’t show at the front of the crown.

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This tutorial is for non commercial use only: you can use it to make as many flower crowns as you want for yourself or as gifts, but please don't make any for sale. You may borrow a couple of photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to this page on my blog, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial / share my templates on your site. Thanks!

New in My Shop: Romantic Felt Flower Headbands Tutorial

The latest printable PDF sewing pattern in my shop is all about flowers!

My Romantic Flowers tutorial includes step by step instructions for sewing pretty felt flower headbands...

... and how to turn the design into a brooch.

There are also templates and instructions for sewing a large headband or floral crown featuring three of the flowers for some serious flower power this summer.

These flowers would be lovely to wear year-round or to summer parties - why not make a flower to match your favourite dress?

They'd also be great for making accessories for a wedding: the large headband for the bride, single flower hairbands for the bridesmaids, and flower brooches worn on the groomsman's lapels.

Oh, and the PDF includes a flower embroidery pattern, too! Yay!

 

Remember: when you buy any patterns from my shop you can of course make lots of things for yourself and to give as gifts, but you can also sell the finished items at craft fairs or in your Etsy shop, etc, as long as you credit me as the designer.

Click here to buy my Romantic Flowers PDF from my shop! The file will be available to download immediately after purchase. Shop before June 10th to get this design at the launch price.

P.S. A couple of the samples I stitched for this pattern will be available in my sample sale this weekend! 

Don't want to miss out on things like sample sales and new patterns? Subscribe to my newsletter for shop updates and/or a monthly free project!

Oddments

A couple of bits and bobs to mention today...

Love birds? You can now buy a full set of seven British garden bird ornaments over in my Etsy shop:


If you buy them as a set instead of buying the individual listings in my shop, you'll save about £9 (and the postage works out cheaper too). My mum has a set of these - her Christmas tree is full of felty things I've made :)

To make room for new things, I'm continuing to clear out some old designs at bargain prices. Lots of items are now only £5 including these large flower brooches made from eco friendly recycled felt...


... and these eco friendly flower combs, which are now only £4 each!


Finally, here's a quick snap of a custom flower headband I stitched last week - ready to get packed up in candy stripe packaging and posted to a (hopefully) happy customer.


I do love those pink and white stripes!

Pink Flowers

I added lots of pretty pink flowers to my shops over the weekend...


... a little hairclip, some headbands, and small & large brooches:


The large brooches are definitely my favourite - all those layers! Yum.

All the flowers are currently available over in my Etsy shop, and the headbands and large brooches are also available in my Folksy shop.

Turquoise and Plum

New in my shops this week: lots of pretty felt flowers!

The flowers are made from thick, textured needle felt, and embellished with a cluster of seed beads in the centre. Choose from light turquoise with sparkly silver seed beads or rich plum/magenta with glossy black beads.


The flowers are available as brooches in two sizes...

... and as headbands:


You can find them in my Etsy shop and my Folksy shop.

How To: Felt Flower Hairband

UPDATE: this tutorial is now part of my printable PDF romantic flowers pattern, available from my shop.
 

Subscribe to my newsletter for a monthly free pattern and visit my crafty tutorial archive for lots of free projects.

Making Buttons

Today I've been making some felt buttons.


(Updated) Some extra info, for those of you interested in making buttons for your own crafts!

The buttons are made with plain cover buttons which snap together, you can press them together by hand but using a tool makes it much easier. I use a universal cover button tool (pictured above) , you can use it for pressing different sized buttons together, and the packaging also helpfully came with templates drawn on it for the size of felt/fabric you need to cover each size of button.

The wool blend felt I sell is perfect for covering buttons, but remember only to use them for things you won't be washing! I don't sell button making supplies in my shops but your local haberdashery/sewing-supplies shop will probably stock some.

Here are lots of felt buttons I made a couple of years ago - be warned, making these is quite addictive!


The turquoise buttons I've made today are going to be used to make some felt flower brooches & hairbands, like these:


I love the lilac and turquoise colour combo, but if you fancy something a bit different you can now order custom versions of this design - in any colours you want!

Giveaway Winner: Flower Hairband

Thanks for all your kind comments about my flower hairband, everyone!

I really appreciate your sweetness even though you were probably all just being nice to try and win stuff, heehee ;)


The lucky winner, chosen at random is.... Lucíola! Please leave me a comment with your email address Lucíola and I'll be in touch.

Giveaway: Flower Headband

This month I'm giving away one of the felt flower headbands I made for Cloth Magazine (buy a copy of the autumn issue for instructions on how to make your own!).

The flower is made from gorgeous 100% wool felt in lovely autumnal colours, sewn onto an elastic headband.


Keep it for yourself, or give it as a gift to a flower-loving friend :)

As always, I'm happy to ship internationally, so anyone can enter. Just leave a comment on this blog post before 10pm on Sunday 17th October and I'll pick a winner at random on Monday (18th October).

Please make sure you leave a name or pseudonym (no anonymous comments please!) and be sure to come back to see if you got picked. If I'm unable to contact the winner within two weeks another will be chosen.

EDIT: this giveaway is now closed!

Cloth Magazine - interview and tutorial

Have you heard of Cloth Magazine?


It's a lovely little UK sewing magazine, published quarterly. The autumn issue has just been published and it includes an interview with me about my business...


... plus a felt project designed by me: a felt flower headband in yummy autumnal tones. You can see the tutorial & download pattern pieces HERE.


You might recognise those colours from the scraps I blogged about a couple of months ago.


Cloth is available from their website or from independent stockists throughout the UK.

Finishing Touches

There are lots of almost finished batches of things sitting in my workbox at the moment. Tonight I'll be finishing these lovelies...

Pink cherry blossoms ready to be sewn onto headbands:
Plus a pile of felt cameras waiting for their final details:

A (Not Quite) January Sale!

I'm having a big sale over in my Etsy shop to help make room for all the new things I've got planned for 2010.

Bargains galore, including some discounted Christmas stock and lots of old designs that I'm discontinuing like this violets brooch...
... this tea addict brooch...
... and my range of orange poppy designs:
I'm also having smaller sales on my website, & in my Folksy and DaWanda shops.

Please note I'm still technically on holiday until 11th January (catching up on some much needed sleep!) but all orders will ship asap once I return to work.