Rustic Sewn Flowers

I think when I use the word rustic it should be rubbish as I am not a neat worker at all. I think it is because I craft from the heart and make things up as I go along. If I do get organised or use a pattern or anything like that I over think the project and it ends up in the bin or unfinished forever.

This is the bag I made for challenge 18 at Out of a Hat Creations and Sandra asked how I made the flowers so I thought I would write down how I made them. The tutorial flowers may not be exactly the same as the ones on the bag--well none of those are the same as each other either because they were just made roughly with no pattern or anything else.

Here goes--hold onto your hats and use your own measurements and adapt anything that I have written to suit your style. I have hand sewn my flowers but I am sure they could be machine sewn and look even better.

Just to say that thinner material is the easiest to work with--the one I used for the middle was very thick and it made it a harder to work as the thickness of layers grew..

you need 12 pieces of  of the larger size in one material and 12 pieces of the smaller size in a contrast.

Sizes I used were 3.5x 2.5 inches and 2.5x 1.5 inches

Pair the pieces and then angle the top as in the picture

right sides together sew around the edges leaving a fairly good seam-turn right side out

sew around the edges--you don't need to do this but if you hand sew it is extra insurance that the seams wont come apart--especially if your sewing is as bad as mine:( Gather up the base of the petal to give it shape

when you have all the petals ready cut a circle about 2inch radius

pin the petals around the circle

sew them to the circle and to each other as near to the base of the petals as possible

do it all again with the other size and colour

Stitch them together

Now comes the nice part--chose something for the middle--big enough to cover all the messy stitching in the centre--if you are like me that is.

Hope you enjoy making some and that if you have any hints or tips on how to improve the tutorial you will let me know.

Love Chrissie xx