Three DIY flower brooches – no sew!

Leggi questo post in: Italiano

Have you gotten stung by the homemade flower brooch bug? I certainly have! I love making fabric flowers because a) they’re easy and usually fast to make, and b) they’re so versatile! You can sew them directly to clothing as an embellishment, make hair accessories from them, attach them to gift packages, or stick a pin on the back for a brooch that you can decorate your bag or clothes with! So much fun!

I’ve made fabric flowers quite a few times in the past, such as these gathered strips of my old undies (yes! my underwear!) that became rosettes to cover stains on a t-shirt, these folded circles that got sewn together into a flower shape, and strips of wool fabric or strips of felted sweaters that got rolled up into rosettes.

Every year at Christmas I get slightly obsessive about some crafted or sewn item or another and make loads of them for everyone as gifts. And last year was the year of flower brooches! I made a few crocheted brooches, then some really fast felt brooches. Read on to find out more about them!

I started off by making one simple crocheted spiral flower brooch with leaves following this tutorial by IsLaura, which is the one you can see on the right in the pictures above. I actually made a yellow chenille one, too, but for some reason I didn’t take a picture of it.

When I showed it to a friend who specializes in freeform crochet, she suggested I crochet a hyperbolic flower. I love hyperbolic crochet, a technique discovered by the scientist Daina Taimina. C’mon, how awesome is it that a Cornell scientist uses crochet to illustrate her discoveries of hyperbolic space? Just amazing.

There are all sorts of variations on hyperbolic crochet. If I remember correctly, I crocheted 40 chain stitches, then went back down the row crocheting three double crochet stitches in each chain stitch, and then did another row doing the same, three double crochet in each stitch. This excessive increasing creates the cool ruffled fabric, which then gets rolled up to create a flower shape.

I crocheted the leaves from the IsLaura tutorial I mentioned before, attached them and the pins to the back, and I was done!

At that point, I was sort of running out of time before Christmas, so I decided to make a bunch of felt flowers in a fraction of the time with this tutorial. All you need is a strip of felt, sharp scissors and a glue gun. I also cut little felt leaves and a circle backing to which I sewed a pin backing, though you could easily just glue the pin on.

The tutorial shows how to fold, cut and roll the strip of felt, at which point I added on the felt leaves and backing with the pin.

Done! So easy and quick!

You can see the difference between the flowers with straight cuts and slanted cuts in these pictures.

I gave the hyperbolic flower brooch to my mom for Mother’s Day, and she wears it all the time on her jacket. It gives a nice pop of her favorite color to an otherwise dull jacket.

(By the way, recognize this teal yarn? It’s the same recycled plastic yarn that I used for my crocheted fruit net explorer bags for kids!)

If you like these DIY flower brooches, let me share some great fabric flower ideas from my Pinterest boards!