How To Make A T-Shirt Fabric Flower: Tutorial Time!

For my birthday two summers ago, I got a lovely little gift card to Anthropologie, and treated myself to two hair clips that looked like these:

They were a bit pricey, as Anthro stuff tends to be-- $15 apiece, and after months of wearing them and pondering them and KNOWING I could make them myself somehow, I finally took some time to actually dissect the flower (not LITERALLY, but close! I poked and prodded that thing until I was SURE it'd fall apart!), and I came up with a reasonably similar version.

This tutorial is going to share that process with you, so you can make a flower that looks like THIS:

Pretty close, right? Cute!

T-Shirt Fabric Flower Supply List

1/4 + yard of t-shirt fabric, also called cotton knit interlocking
paper to make a template
scissors
straight pins
felt in a matching or complimentary color
glue (I use either Tacky Glue or hot glue)
hair accessory to complete the flower (headband, clip, pin)

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So to begin, you will need a little bit of t-shirt fabric. You can use an old t-shirt you actually have, or you can go to the fabric store and get some cotton knit interlocking (the official name of this fabric). Ask your friendly fabric store employee for help if you're a fabric store rookie. You can get by with 1/4 yard if you only want to try this out with one or two flowers. Or you can get more if you are feeling ambitious and want to make several. 

You'll also need some felt and some kind of hair clip, pin, headband, etc. 

Step One: 

Make a flower template. This doesn't have to be super precise, but is should have 5-6 petals. You can see I just used scrap paper. My flower is approx. 3"-3.5" across.

(P.S. Ew, gross-- forgive my dingy college-era mini-ironing board that is the backdrop for these photos. It is old and not-so-pretty. I apologize!)

Step Two:

Cut a stack of these flowers. Some of you might want to trace the template... But I am lazy and HATE pen lines, so I just stacked my fabric two layers deep and cut around the template while it was pinned. You need nine total flowers, though this stack shows 11 (can't have too many extras, right??).

Step Three:

Cut a felt circle in a coordinating or complimentary color, about 2.5" or 3" across.

Take your first flower and fold it in half.

And then in half again.

Do this with your first four petals, and arrange them so their corners all meet in the center of the felt circle.

Step Four:

You can do the assembling in one of three ways. I've done all three, and truly have no preference. You can use:
1. Tacky Glue
2. Hot glue gun
3. Thread

In this tutorial, you'll see both glue techniques.

Glue the petals onto the felt. Then glue the folded flap to itself. (This pic shows Tacky Glue).

Step Five:

Now fold four more petals the same way, and glue them in a second layer, but semi-perpendicular to the first layer. Okay, too hard to explain, let me show you. (This pic shows glue gun glue). Add all four petals onto the layer this way, and once again glue the top flap of the folded petal to itself.

Step Six:

Fluff up your two-layered flower to begin seeing what the final product will look like.

See the sides? Lots of fun texture from the multiple folds and layers!

Step Seven:

Now for the center. Take a petal and fold it in half. This time, instead of folding it again, you are going to roll it into a sort of cone, with the fold being the narrow part of the cone and the petals being the wide part:

You're making a rosebud type of effect, shown here:

Step Eight:

I actually trimmed about 1/2" off of the bottom of this rosebud cone, but you don't have to. You then GOB it with glue (perhaps hot glue is best here, or thread. Tacky Glue might not hold this last petal well enough for you to wait for it to dry)... And place the rosebud, bottom tip down, into the center of your flower.
(I'm mushing it down in there pretty hard, if you can't tell.)

Step Nine:

We need to fluff up this flower in a more permanent way now, otherwise you'll have two flat layers and a sticking-up rosebud. So we are going to attach parts of the top layer of petals to the rosebud, to bring up the petals to the same level as the rosebud. Like this:

Glue dots in place:

Petals now attached to rosebud:

Step Ten:

If you want, you can do this gluing petals to each other thing in other places to bring more body to the flower, or you can call it good just the way it is.

If you are ready to finish, you just need to attach your preferred hair accessory to the felt circle on the back.

Headband: If you want this to go on a headband, cut another felt circle and use a glue gun to glue the flower on top of the headband. Ring the second felt circle with glue and attach it to the first felt circle, with the headband sandwiched between. Don't be skimpy with the glue!

Hair Clip: Sew or glue your clip onto the flower back, centered on your felt circle.

Pin: Sew the pin onto the back, centered on your felt circle.

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And VOILA! You have your own Anthropologie-style T-Shirt Fabric Flower! The fabric won't fray, and the color will stay fresh, and you'll be hip and ready to go!

Ta da!

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To enjoy my other flower tutorial,  the handmade singed fabric flowers, click HERE. Remember, if you get crafty and make some of these, blog it and let me know via comment or email. Also, you can email me a photo of your flowers and I'll blog about you in a future post and link to your blog if you like! Fun, right?