Felt Flower Garland

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Cut out your flowers and leaves:
Choose your colors and begin to cut your flowers! This is the suppppper fun part!
There are 4 easy steps to cutting these flowers:
1. Cut a circle (I traced a circle from tupperwear lid tp make sure my circle was
round and in various sizes)
2. Cut a slit about 1 inch into the side of the circle and then begin to cut a spiral
inward until you get to the middle - leave a little “knob” at the very middle center of the
spiral
3. Then begin to add “variety” to your leaves. You will cut back from the inside out
along the spiral (just one edge of the spiral - the “outer edge”). THIS IS THE STEP
THAT MAKES THE FLOWERS HAVE VARIETY! Think about the shapes of pedals - try
some with a scalloped edge for a more daisy look, try just a wavy edge for a more
garden rose look or even double bumps for some carnation style :) This is fun to see
how the lines you cut end up turning into flowers - I did just a BIG variety on all sizes of
the circles that I cut.

4. The last step is to cut that inner “knob” into a tab that can be folded over later
on (for threading ribbon or hanging, etc). Basically cut your round knob into a slit by
making it more rectangular rather than a circle (see pic for a visual example)! :)
I also chose to cut out some “insides” or middle parts to the flowers to add depth and
variety (and this also uses MORE scraps..... #winwin)! 1. Cut a strip of felt about
2 inches wide by however long you want (about 2-3 inches will do for the center of each
flower)
2. You can either cut slits (fringe) along one side (leaving the bottom 1/4” free for
stitching down) orrrr you can fold over a felt strip lengthwise and cut fringe along the
folded edge (again, leaving the bottom 1/4” free for stitching).
I also cut out some leaf shapes out of green felt and some “veins” or details from the
greenish felt scraps that I had from other projects. I LOVED the variety that adding
leaves and the veins gave the whole garland when finished! :)
2. Gather stitch + tie off :)
With your sewing machine, put on your straight stitch foot and choose a straight stitch
on your machine (or screen or whatever option you have)! THEN, to get a “gathering
stitch” without a gathering foot, you will simply elongate your stitch length......mine is on
my LCD screen and I can visually see that the stitch is being elongated as I push the
numbers higher! :) I chose to elongate my switch to 4.0 (but you can go as high as you
want honestly)! :)
Place your flower under your foot so that you will stitch from the inside center along the
straight spiral that you cut in step 1. Be careful to stay about 1/4” away from teh edge
and just work your way out. When you are done stitching, you will pull out a longer tail to
leave thread for gathering.
Now it’s time to gather your flower! You will gently begin to pull the top thread of your
stitch that you just stitched on the machine and start to gather your felt. BE SURE NOT
TO PULL TOO HARD or you will break your stitch. You will want to pull from BOTH
SIDES of teh flower (the inside and the outside).......pull about 1/2 the length of the
spiral from the outside top thread and then pull the rest of the spiral from the inside top
thread! :)
TIP: Think of the gather as less of “pulling the tread” and more of “sliding the felt down
the stitch”.....this helped me to pull more gently and help gather the fabric well!
When the spiral is gathered as much as you want (not too tight) then you will want to tie
off the gathering by simply tying the top and bottom threads to one another (do this for
both the inside of the spiral and the outside of the spiral).
3. Now it’s time to wind your flower! :)
Hold onto the tab (the inside of the spiral) and you will begin to wind your flower from
the inside out. I held the tab by pinching it between my thumb and pointer finger and
then wound the rest of the gathered felt around that point. I used some fabric glue to
tack a few spots in place along the bottom straight, gathered edge to be sure that it all

stuck together. Then ran a bead of glue on the final outer pedal part to secure the whole
flower together!! :)
I then folded over the bottom tab to create a “channel” to thread the ribbon through and
tacked it down! :)
NOTE: If you have any leaves that you cut out, you will want to glue the leave under the
tab at the bottom of the flower!
AND TAAADAAAA I had my first flower completed!
Repeat ALLLLL of these steps in an assembly line fashion to make as many amazing,
felt flowers as you want!!! :)