Tutorial of the green & yellow flower pin

August 17, 2006 at 9:55 am | Posted in Craft - How-to's | 39 Comments

It has been almost 1 year since my last picture tutorial. I’m not sure if I have “recorded” all neccessary steps.

Click the pictures for bigger version.

1. Use color pencils & sketchbook to design the color theme. It’s easier to do so with the available fabric scraps around. The petal color is considered as the top. As for my design, the light yellow fabrics would be on the top and the dark green on the bottom.

2. Make the template….with my pepper bottle. ^^ It would be better if there is a pair of compasses…or a printer. But I’m lucky enough to find something fit my scraps. Most of my scraps are 2 inch squares. Here is the pattern. Resize as you want.

3. Cut the template out. It is possible to draw a circle directly on the fabrics without such a template (but with the bottle), even though I prefer to make one so as to keep a record of this project. That’s why I always keep the paperboard packages of various food. 🙂

4. Draw the pattern on the scraps. It might be easier to use a “B” pencil. My HB pencil was just too sharp at the moment, hence I use my fast-fade marker. (The circle faded kind of too fast. -.-)

5. Pair the top fabric with the bottom and pin the right sides together. In my project, it’s to pin each yellow scraps with a green one. We need 6 such pairs for one flower pin.

6. Sew each pair together following the circle drew before, but leave a small open of 1-2cm.

7. Trim the piece to a circle. I only keep 2mm “seam allowrance”.(I’m not sure whether it can still be called “seam allowrance” or not if it is made in this way.)

8. Turn the right sides out from the small open left in step 6. Use blind stitches to “close” the open.

9. Mark the sewing guidelines on the “TOP” of each round piece. It was my favorite part of this project to obtain an equilateral triangle inside the cirle with just one ruler. 😀 Anyway, the lines are also in the pattern.

10. Attach each circle with another two following the lines from step 9. Please note, “bottom” is facing “bottom” during this process.

11. That’s how it looks like after all six pieces are sewed together. It’s almost done, and we still need some decorations. ^^

12. Yoyo is quite popular in this situation, however I think making a yoyo is too wasteful. Here I just use a 1-inch wide orange leftover. The length doesn’t really matter.

13. Fold each end of the orange tape and fold it into two.

14. Sew the open with running stitch and pull the thread so as to gather this side of the fabric. Ajust it to a circle, exactly like a yoyo. ^^ If you want to make a yoyo, see Heather Bailey’s tutorial.

15. Attach the “fake” yoyo to the flower.

16. The last thing is to add a button over the orange piece and we are done! The back of this flower will be like this:

Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any question.:-)