Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Fabric Flower Hair Clip Tutorial

I had a top that I really liked, but could no longer fit into it after I had my first kid *sob sob*.  I just couldn't bear to send it to the Salvation Army, so I decided to upcycle it into a fabric flower hair clip.

First of all, I cut a template from a cereal box:
Cut out a 5-petal flower template
Use the template to draw out 9 flowers on your chosen fabric.  I used a ball point pen here so that it shows up better.  No issue, just cut slightly inside the pen markings
Mark out 9 flowers on fabric
Then cut them out:
9 fabric flowers
Fold 8 of the pieces into quarters.  Don't match up the edges when you fold them, the more they don't match up, the better the effect.  Here's what one of them looks like:
Flower folded in quarters
Now get ready a small circle of felt:
Pink felt to match the fabric
Using a hot glue gun, glue 4 folded pieces to the felt like this:
3 folded pieces glued to felt circle
1st layer of 4 folded pieces
Now, use another 4 folded pieces and glue another layer, offsetting the pieces like this:
2nd layer of folded pieces should be offset by 45 degrees
2nd layer completed
Now, with the final flower (number 9), fold it in half, roll it up to form a bud and glue so that it keeps its shape:
All rolled up
After rolling, the bottom gets quite bulky, so use your scissors and cut a little bit of the tip off, holding on to the bud firmly so that it doesn't unroll.
Snip off the bottom tip
We're almost there.... put a generous amount of hot glue in the centre of your petal layers and hold the bud firmly in place until the glue hardens
Glue bud to centre of petal layers
Ruffle up the petals as you wish, adding some glue here and there to hold the petals in place.  And here's the final fabric flower:
Completed fabric flower
Since I'm going to use this as a hair clip, the final step for me was to glue on the clip and there you have it -- an upcycled fabric flower hair clip:
Glue on the clip

6 comments:

  1. Very cute! I've seen this idea using just circles, but I love the effect starting out with a flower shape and fluffing them up like that! :) lisa

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for submitting this fab tutorial to be featured over at And Sew We Craft. We will be featuring it this week!

    Amy x

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is one of the clearer flower tutorials! Very nice.

    ReplyDelete