These leafy designs would make great gifts for the plant-lovers in your life! You could also leave off the brooch backs and use the designs as patches to sew on your rucksack, jacket, or other items that don’t need regular washing. UPDATE: you can now find the cactus brooch tutorial here and the monstera leaf brooch tutorial here.
The tutorials originally appeared on the Village Haberdashery's blog and were created using felt and other craft supplies from their shop.
You will need:
- The plant lady brooch templates (follow the link to view and download the PDF template sheet)
- Pink and green felt
- Matching sewing thread
- Light, dark and mid green embroidery thread
- A brooch clasp
- White tissue paper
- A pencil or fine pen
- A sewing needle and pins
- Sewing scissors or embroidery scissors (these are great for cutting out small shapes!)
To make a Plant Lady brooch:
1. Trace the brooch design onto a piece of white tissue paper, with a sharp pencil or a fine pen. Roughly cut out the design and sew it to a piece of light pink felt with large tacking stitches.
2. Embroider the lettering and the outlines of the leaves with backstitch, sewing small stitches as you sew around the curves. Use three strands of dark green embroidery thread (from a skein of six strands) for the lettering, and two strands of mid green thread for the leaves.
3. Remove the tacking stitches and gently tear away the tissue paper, carefully removing any remaining small pieces of paper with a pin.
4. Fill in the leaves with two strands of light green embroidery thread, as shown.
5. Trace the circular brooch shape onto a piece of white tissue paper and cut it out. Position this over your stitching so it’s centred and pin it in place. Cut around the circle then unpin and discard the tissue paper.
6. Place the felt circle on a piece of bright green felt and whip stitch it in position with matching pink sewing thread.
7. Trim the green felt, leaving a narrow border around the pink circle. Use this shape as a template to cut out a matching backing piece of bright green felt.
8. Turn the backing piece over. Sew a brooch clasp in position with a double thickness of matching sewing thread. Place the front and back of the brooch together and sew around the edges with whip stitch and more matching thread.
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This tutorial is for non commercial use only: you can use it to make as many brooches 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!
