Hi there! I’m Michele and I blog over at Moonfield Lane. I’ve been a fan of Erin’s creativity for a long time, and I’m thrilled to guest post at Lansdowne Life while Erin cuddles her new baby girl.
Today (in honor of spring and baby girls) I’m going to show you how to make a flower garland from scrap fabric.
If you sew or if you’ve ever made fabric crafts, you probably have an assortment of fabric scraps already. If you don’t, you can buy fat quarters cheaply at the fabric store, often bundled into coordinating prints.
You’ll need:
- fabric scraps
- scissors
- cardstock and a pencil to make a pattern
- needle and thread
- twine
- hot glue gun
Before you start, I’d think about where you want to hang your garland, how long you want it to be and how many flowers you’ll need. I hung my twine across my mantel before cutting it, allowing for drape. I then marked the middle of the twine, so that I could begin my flowers on either side of the mark. I also tried to get a visual idea of how many flowers I wanted and how I wanted them spaced. I ended up with 12 flowers on 7 feet of twine to hang on my 4 foot mantle.
Loosely draw and cut out three petal shaped circles on the cardstock, each one smaller than the other. These three petals make up one flower. Mine turned out to be about 2 3/4 inches, 2 1/4 inches and 1 3/4 inches respectively, but you don’t need to be precise.
Decide on your fabrics and start cutting! I was able to cut through four folds of fabric at a time, making the process go a little faster. You’ll need a flower on the front of your garland as well as a flower to glue on the back, meaning I created 24 flowers in all. So I cut 24 petals of each size and 72 all together. You’ll want the flowers on the front and back, if not entirely the same, to at least sort of match.
As you’re cutting your petals, lay them on top of one another the way you’re going to sew them so you can visualize the finished flower and how your patterns look together. You can see in the photo that I frayed my edges a little by running my fingernails around the edge of each petal, pulling some of the loose threads.
Corinne says
I made this yesterday to bring some Spring into my house and it was really fun! Thank you Michele for the great idea and tutorial. Erin, congrats to you and your family. Etta is as adorable as her big sister.
Erin @ Lansdowne Life says
Fun! Glad you’re feeling springy. We have like a thousand inches of snow in STL today! Crazy.