DIY Fantastic: Fabric flowers

Following on with the celebratory wedding themes, today we have some gorgeous etherial fabric flowers for you. Now I know I've recently got engaged, but I promise I had this post all ready to go way before that was announced!! And although we whipped these these gorgeous fabric flowers up as more decorations for Claire's wedding, they're not just for nuptials, you could use them for any occasion that calls for a few extra petals!

These are the key ingredients we used:

1. A fabric of your choice. We went with a light gauze material in purple, to fit in with Claire's wedding theme. But you could experiment with all sorts of different textures and materials
2. All the usual sewing kit including scissors, pins, needle and thread
3. Cord/string/ribbon for threading the flowers together
4. Mixed buttons or big sequins to decorate

To kick us off I cut out a long narrow shape out of the purple material - I went for about 5 inches wide and about two thirds of a metre long. Again these are very vague, but that's the beauty, you can choose different sizes and lengths depending on the look you're going for.

Then fold the fabric in half length wise, to make an even narrower long strip, and start a running stitch from one end.

As you make your way down the material, start to slowly gather the running stitch as you see fit. The length of the stitches you go for can create different effects - a longer stitch will give 'bigger' waves in the fabric, whereas smaller stitches will give a tighter more wrinkled effect. (Hmm nice!)

You will find that as you gather, the material will slowly start to curl in on itself to create the shape of a flower. See, it basically makes itself!! :)

Arrange the curled layers into a flower shape that you're happy with and then flip them over to sew up from the back. A few long stitches across the back should keep it secure.

Finally, add a cute button in a contrasting colour in the middle of the front and hey presto! I found it was fun to sew them along a pretty coloured cord to almost create a flower garland.

So if like us, you have a tree in your garden that simply refuses to flower, don't sit around waiting for it to bud, just make some instead! Oh and you can add the fairy lights to it too, if you're feeling fancy! ;)

xx