2 easy fabric flowers to make your quilts sensational

This week, we’ve been exploring how to make fabric flowers to embellish your quilts, therefore adding texture and interest. We reviewed how to make flowers from fabric squares and fabric strips. Today, I’ll share with you 2 easy fabric flowers to make your quilts sensational using round shaped fabric.

These clever fabric flowers can be use for much more than embellishments for your quilts. They make great headbands, brooches, and look fabulous on quilted bags! You can use scraps, solids, prints, cottons, other types of fabric, as long as you can fold it, you can create flowers!

We’ll be featuring two different techniques today that you can use alone or mix and match to create some pretty fun flowers.

Double Fold Flowers

In this tutorial, every flower starts with a circle, a fabric circle to be exact. You’ll require a small piece of felt as well as 1 or 2 pieces of fabric, a 10″ square of each fabric is plenty if you keep your flowers relatively small.

1. Cut out 2 different sizes of circles. I used the TrueCut 360, a rotary cutting tool which allows me to pick any size for the circle I want. Make 4 small ones from one piece of fabric and 4 larger ones from the second piece of fabric. The 2 sizes of circles I used were 3″ diameter and 4″ diameter. Cut out a 1½” circle from a piece of felt.

2. Taking one of the larger circles, fold it in half, then half again.

3. With needle and thread, tack one of the folded circles onto the felt circle by putting the point of the fabric quarter circle at the center of the felt circle and stitch down.
4. Repeat the folding procedure and put the next fabric quarter circle beside the first one and tack down on the felt. Continue until all 4 parts of the circle are stitched down.

5. Take one of the smaller circles and fold in a similar manner, then place it on top of the first layer centering its point between two petals.

6. Continue in the same manner with the other three fabric circles, folding and tacking onto bottom layer.
7. Embellish with a fun button or vintage jewelry.

Triple Fold Flowers

Use 4 large circles and 4 smaller ones and the 1½” piece of felt. I used the same size of circles as my double fold flowers. The set of instructions is the same, except for the fold, we are going to do a triple fold for each circle.

1. First fold the circle in half. Then bring up one side of the fold to the middle, your 2^nd fold, then bring up the other side into the middle – 3^rd fold.

2. Do the same thing for the four smaller circles and attach the first layer of petals to the felt in a similar manner as we did for the double fold flower.

Now, that you know both methods, mix and match the methods ie. double fold on bottom, triple fold on top. Or go a little crazy and do 3 layers!

Have Some Fabric Flower Fun!

I hope you’ll have fun with these 2 easy fabric flowers to make your quilts sensational. Gather up some fun fabrics such as prints, solids, batiks, and remember they don’t have to be only cotton! Try satin or lace for a unique effect. Mix and match the layers and attach to the quilt by hand stitching on or if you want it to be removable, as in for a child’s quilt, attach Velcro to the bottom of the flower and the other side of velcro to the quilt. When it comes time for a wash, simply pull the fabric flowers off and toss your quilt in the wash.

What other places can you think of putting fabric flowers?