Ruffled Fabric Flowers

Directions

1. Start by cutting a long strip of a fabric of your choice. The piece of fabric that I cut is 4 inches wide by 21 inches long. This size fabric strip creates a flower that's about 3 inches in diameter. The longer the fabric strip is the more layers your flower will have.

   Fold your fabric length wise in half. Make sure that you turn the fabric inside out. Fasten your fabric with pins and iron the strip in order to give it a nice crease.
2. Stitch your fabric strip together length wise. I used a 5/8 inch seam but for this project your flower doesn't have to be perfect or exact so you can use whatever size seam that you would like. You can also sew these ruffle flowers by hand if you don't have a sewing machine, I just like using the sewing machine because it's faster. :)
   
3. Sew just ONE of the ends of the fabric strip together. Make sure to leave the other end open for the time being. Turn your fabric strip right side out -it's best the iron the fabric strip after you turn it right side out.
   
4. Fold the open ended strip into itself and sew the end shut as shown. Use a needle and thread to sew gathering stitches along one of the long edges of the strip. Each of my stitches were approxamately a half inch apart, they don't have to be exact though.
5. Pull your thread tightly together to create your ruffles. Make sure not to twist your fabric while you're pulling it together. Once you have pulled your ruffles tightly together form your ruffles into a round, overlapping flower shape as shown. Fasten your flower with several stitches and voila! You have a fabric ruffle flower!
6. You can either sew or glue a button, flower, brad, etc. to the center of the flower. I chose to adhere a button to mine to use as an embellishment on my scrapbook layout. If you're planning on fastening your flower to an item of clothing I would recommend securely sewing your center onto your flower to ensure that it won't fall off in the future.

   Thank you so much for letting me share my tutorial with you!