How to make a felt sunflower...

OK, here comes my first real tutorial!

I'm going to show you how to make the sunflower in my earlier picture.

You will need:

 A4 sheet of felt in yellow. I got mine from Hobby craft. It needs to be fairly stiff. Acrylic is fine.

Enough brown felt to cut out one, 3.5 in (9cm) diameter circle and one 2.75 ( 7cm) circle

A small amount of wadding to pad the centre of the flower.

5 or 6 small dark colour seed beads. ( I have gone a bit overkill in the photo)

Thread to match each of the felts.

A petal template.

My template is cut from a 1.5in by 2 in rectangle of cereal packet card. Fold the card in half along the longest length to make sure your petal shape is symmetrical.

Cut out one, 3.5 in (9cm) diameter circle and one 2.75 ( 7cm) circle from the brown felt and one, 2.5 ( 6.5cm) circle from the wadding.

Next, cut out 15 petals from the yellow felt using your template.

It may be easier to cut three, 2 inch strips first and then cut that into 1.5 inch sections, especially if you have a rotary cutter.

To shape the petals:

Fold in half down the length and over stitch with a small stitch, 3 or 4 times.

Next, squash it flat.

Now over stitch it on to the brown felt.

Repeat with the rest of the petals evenly around the circle.

Place the circle of wadding in the centre and then place the smaller brown circle on top.

Carefully stitch around the circle using small stitches.  Make sure the wadding is underneath all the way around and stitch through ALL layers.

Now for the beads:

Secure your thread underneath the flower, either with a knot or a couple of over stitches and then push the needle through from the back out of the centre of the flower. Thread a seed bead onto your needle and push it past the eye onto the thread.  Push the needle back through all the layers of the flower just to she side of your original hole.  Repeat in a random pattern with the other beads.

The next step are optional. I secured each of the petals to its neighbour with a small over stitch on the side of each one. This prevents any movement or spreading during wear.

You now have a completed flower TA -DA!


 It now depends on what you want to use the flower for as to how you back it.  To finish it neatly, I cut another piece of felt and glued it to the back to cover my stitching.  If you want to use the flower as a pin brooch, you can sew either a safety pin or a brooch pin to the backing felt prior to gluing.  If you would like to use it as a hair accessory, cut two slits in the backing felt and insert a slide grip or head band through prior to gluing.


 The sunflower can of course be made in different sizes for different projects. I made a couple of hair slides by reducing the size of everything. They could be used as card toppers, or if you made a bunch of them, they could be displayed in a vase.

I hope this all made sense. There will be more pictures soon, but the light is fading here. Any questions feel free to leave a comment and I will get back to you as soon as I can :)

Footnote: I hate to be all official, but please don't use this "how to" on any other site or document without my prior position and please do not mass produce and sell on the finished article..pretty please!