Making a large felt flower

I know these have been done in a squillion different places before but thought I would show you how I do them (hot glue burns and all!). I will give you the dimensions I used for this flower which ended up 14 cm across.

First you need the following supplies:

• Hot glue gun or sewing machine or needle and thread

• Felted sweater, I used one for the petals and a different one for the backing circle (hopefully not your husbands favourite jumper that accidentally got washed on a hot cycle....)

• Scissors

Cut a felt circle ( mine had a diameter of 8cm)

Then cut some petals, for the big blue flower I did:

• 7 - 5cm (at bottom) x 5.5cm tall (but could have done with 8)
• 6 - 4cm (at bottom) x 4.5 cm tall
• 15 - 2.5cm (at bottom) x3 cm tall (2 layers on top and some to fill any wee gaps)
• Strip 7cm x 1cm

This is not the best petal I took a photo of, make the bottom slightly narrower but keep the middle the same width (hope this makes sense!)

put some glue on the bottom edge (and try not to get it on your skin, it is hot, the clue is in the name...!)

Fold the two bottom corners to the middle (you could also sew the petals closed)

then stick the petals round the felt circle (or sew them on), large petals round the outside, medium next, overlapping the joins between the big ones, and small ones in the centre. I forgot to take more photos of this stage, oops!

Then cut a small strip and roll it up

Glue the rolled up piece in the middle and you should have a fab fabric flower!

I ended up with rather large gaps round the outer edge so I made some more small petals and filled the gaps.

Here is another one I made a while ago (it is only 3 layers of petals) :