Saturday, April 24, 2010

Pink and Green Felt Flower Brooch

This year, I have been responsible for the flair that goes into the MOPS Thank-You baskets for our guest speakers. I realized at 9pm on Thursday night, after an exhausting day, that I forgot to make it for Friday's meeting! Luckily, a few days earlier I decided to invest a whopping $5 in a glue gun (I know--I cannot believe I didn't have one of these!!) so it didn't take hours to put together as it would have if I'd have sewn it all, like usual. It took one hour, start to finish, all done while I was watching the Marriage Ref, which is one of the funniest shows that I've seen on tv in quite some time. Anyway, I know the internet is swimming with flower pin tutorials, but here's one more, because I remembered to take pictures!!

I wanted a layered look, and the only felt colors I had that I liked together were this pink and green. I started by cutting out 10 pink petals. Nothing special. Just 5 little football shapes (well, a little pointier than a football, but you get it), and 5 little petals that are the same as the first 5 but with one straight end.
I then stitched the football-shaped petals together. I arranged them with overlapping ends and stuck a few stitches through it, making sure I caught all the petals. This is my bottom pink flower.
To make the top pink flower, which is the top layer of the brooch and needs more dimension than the other layers, I folded the petal in half length-wise and ran a stitch through the straight end. TIP: I thought I was going to work in the color yellow at some point. If I made this one over again, I'd use matching thread.
String all the remaining petals together in the same way, and secure the thread ends together.
How pretty!
Then I trimmed down the second pink flower to the desired size. This is why it's a good idea to cut your petals just a little bigger than you think you'll need.
For the green parts, I cut out 5 tiny football-shaped petals and a circle that was bigger than the flower. Now, on to the star-shaped green back flower. Most people can draw a 5 point star, right? I marked the points with pins, and cut out little arches between the pins. Using pins saved me from the hassle of having to draw out a star shape on it. If you're not confident in your star-eyeballing, just use a piece of chalk or a marking pen to draw the shape.
See the star shape?
Trim up the points. These are your green flower parts.
To attach these tiny green petals, I arranged them so that they were poking out of the pink petals of the top flower, and then glued them onto the back of the pink flower.
From there, it wasn't hard at all to glue everything together. Just apply the glue and stick your layers together. Then pick out a pretty button...
...and glue that on, too.
For the back of the brooch, I stitched a pin back to another green circle of felt. I then glued that onto the back of the flower. This makes it much easier to make clean-looking stitches.
And there you have it!
Another cool part? The pink felt was the exact same color as the recipient's jacket. Just her style!
TOTAL COST: Scraps and 2 mini hot glue sticks.

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