Making Poinsettias

Flowers from Felt

Sep 24, 2007

These are the ones that don't need watering and won't drop leaves all over your house.

Materials Needed:

Wine colored felt squares-2
Heavy gauge floral wire-1 piece
Gold felt square scrap piece
Dark green felt square-1
Brown felt square scrap piece
Sewing machine
Needle and thread
Scissors
Floral tape
Paper or brown paper bag
Marker
Hot glue gun and glue sticks

Prep Work

Using your paper, draw a flower petal that is flat at one end and pointed at the other. Petal should be about 6" long and 2 1/2" wide. Cut your pattern piece out of the paper.

Lay out your wine colored felt. Lay your pattern piece on the felt and trace. Repeat until you have 12-16 pieces. Sew every two pieces together. Turn felt right side out so that seams are on the inside. Now sew the edges down. Sew one line down the center of the flower for the major vein and sew a few veins running off the main vein at random points. Repeat for all of the petals. Set aside.

Now taking your gold felt, cut a piece about 1/32” by ¾”. Cut this strip into tiny spots. You should get 10-12 out of this piece. Set aside.

Now cut the brown felt into a 1 ¾” circle. Set aside.

Using the hot glue and the dark green felt, cover the piece of floral wire by laying the wire on the edge of the felt square. Run a bead of hot glue all the way down the wire. Quickly roll the felt up with the wire inside. Trim away excess felt. This will not be seen, we just wanted to give it some thickness. Set aside.

With the remaining dark green felt, cut out six leaf petals measuring about 5” x 2”. Sew them together in set of two so you wind up with three leaves. Turn inside right and sew edges. Add veins by sewing a seam down the center and add minor veins randomly off the center vein. Set aside.

Out of the dark green felt cut 1 piece ¼” by 4”. Set aside.

Out of the dark green felt cut a piece 6” by 2”. Set aside.

Assembly

Take your covered floral wire and the dark green felt piece that measures ¼” by 4”. On the very end of your floral wire you are going to glue the felt and coil it around the end. Continue gluing as you go.

Now glue the wine colored flower petals to this base. When that is done, add the brown circle to the center to hide the intersections. Add the golden dots with glue.

It is now time to add your petals. Choose random spots to glue two or three petals to the floral wire. Cover the floral wire with the floral tape working around the petals but hiding their ends.

Your last remaining piece should be the 6” x 2” dark green piece of felt. This is going to hide the connection between the stem and the flower and give it a little more strength.

Glue it around the top of the floral wire, under the flower. Glue only the top of it. Trim away excess so that the remaining felt will be 2 “ from the base of the flower.

Cut one inch triangles from this felt all the way around. This will allow them to fold in neatly. Glue them down to the covered floral wire. That's it. Experiment with other fabrics and colors, sizes and petal shapes.