DIY tutorial: Make fabric flowers with faux leather

Beautiful flowers, and pretty easy to make (no need for a sewing machine). You could use them to decorate or customize clothes, shoes, bags and handbags. They are also perfect to make jewelry or hair accessories.

You will need:

Scraps of pleather (imitation leather).
Sewing thread, sewing needle.
Shank button (it’s time to gather your collection of vintage buttons)

First, you’ll need to cut out petals. You may use the templates I made: download the template HERE.

You need to cut 6 to 8 petal for each flower, depending on thickness of the fabric. If using thin fabric, you’ll need more petals to fill in the flower.

Once all the petals are cut, take a petal and fold it in half lenghtwise, with right sides together.

Then fold the longer sides again so there are 4 layers, with wrong sides together (pointy tip of petal is in my hand).

Insert the needle (with thread already in) at center of width, approx. 3-4mm in from edge of fabric.

Repeat the process with another petal. At this stage, you’ll see whether you need 6 or 8 petals to have a nice fluffy flower.

Join the last petal to the first one and tie off. Thread needle back to Right Side of fabric through center hole so you can add a pretty button.

Once you’ve sewed the button in place, make sure the shank of button is inside center hole of flower, and thread your needle back to Wrong Side of flower.

Then stitch into edge of each petal, joining them to neighboring petals to secure them in place.

Voilà! Tie off and you’re done! I designed three sizes of templates, the smaller one will make a flower measuring approx. 10.5cm (4 in) across. The middle size gives you flowers measuring 11.5cm (4.5 in) across and the larger template makes flowers measuring 14cm (5.5 in) across. Now it’s your turn to play with shapes and sizes: Let the fun begin !