Plant Lady Brooches: Felt Cactus Brooch Tutorial

Sew a fun felt cactus brooch with the second of my plant lady brooch tutorials!

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. Fancy sewing the set? You'll find the Plant Lady 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)
- Light and bright pink felt
- Bright and dark green felt
- Matching sewing thread
- Light pink and white embroidery thread
- A brooch clasp
- A sewing needle and pins
- Sewing scissors or embroidery scissors (these are great for cutting out small shapes!)
- Optional: an air-erasable marker pen

To make a cactus brooch:

1. Use the templates provided to cut one cactus from bright green felt, one plant pot from light pink felt, and one heart from bright pink felt.

2. One by one, sew the shapes to a backing piece of dark green felt. Use whip stitch and matching thread, taking care to sew the bottom edge of the cactus and the top edge of the plant pot flush with each other.

3. Add the stitched spines to the cactus, sewing lots of single stitches with two strands of white embroidery thread (out of the six strands in the skein).

4. Cut a small flower from bright pink felt. You can carefully cut this freehand, or draw a flower on the felt with an air erasable marker pen and cut it out. Sew the flower in position with three strands of light pink embroidery thread, sewing one stitch along each petal as shown.

5. Trim away the backing felt, leaving a narrow border around the cactus design. Then use the shape you’ve just cut out as a template to cut a matching backing piece from dark green felt.

6. Turn over the backing shape. 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!