How to Make Fabric Roses

How do I make miniature fabric flowers? Maybe you want to make petite embellishments for headbands or hair clips. Or perhaps you are seeking ornaments for tiny doll shoes and dresses.

Here is a quick and easy method for making tiny rosettes using ultra suede, felt, knit fabric, or any other fabric you want to try. The more non-fraying, the better. I am using garment weight light ultra suede. You will also need sharp scissors and white tacky glue.

Begin by cutting several small circles into the fabric. Use sharp scissors, and get the shapes as round as you can—it is ok if some look a little squatty (see my examples). You will need about 10 petals for each rose—go ahead and mix up the colors if you want.

The circles shown here are about 4-5mm in diameter for a finished rose width of 7 to 10mm. I recommend making your first rose a little larger so you get comfortable with the construction before you go small.

A tip for cutting out small circles: the easiest method I have found is to cut a thin strip of fabric and then cut the strip into tiny squares. Cut one circle out of each tiny square. This helps keep the circle diameter uniform and you don’t have to hold a lot of extra fabric while making cuts.

Once you have a lot of little circles, get out your white tacky glue—here I am using The Ultimate by Crafter’s Pick—Aleene’s is also good.

Here you can see the construction phases from left to right.

1. To form the center of the flower, begin by taking a smaller circle, add a dot of glue to the lower half and fold it in half. You want the bottom part to be sealed tightly, while the top has a small crevice. If you want, fold this first petal around a piece of wire or floral stamen to give it a stem.
2. Add glue to the bottom front of the next petal and adhere it along the seams of the first petal.
3. Continue to add petals, placing them along the cracks or seams of other petals.
4. Keep adding petals until your flower looks full and complete. Work from the smallest circles to the largest.

This project is perfect for using up teeny tiny fabric scraps. Even a 4 by 4mm piece of fabric can make a petal. You can also use knit fabric for this project. The flower shown above on the right was created using the striped knit you see here.

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Comments

[Kathy Bergen]

I love this! I make many kinds of dolls, out of different kinds of materials. These little roses are perfect for some of their costumes. Thank you so much for sharing this.

[Jessica Hamilton]

Thank you Kathy--it takes such a small amount of material to make these--I've been saving all kinds of scraps and bits of fabrics :].