Weddingbee Blog

Let’s bring back the happy, shall we?

And our joint birthday karaoke extravaganza was happy. Witness:

So you remember my Random. Weekend. Rambling.?

And these teasers?

Notice anything in our birthday photos?

Yup! We had a little matching moment! It was totally wedding inspired, too.

A matching bow tie/hair flower. witness the awesome:

Here was my original inspiration:

source

So you wanna make your own fabric flowers? It’s super easy!

You need:

• fabric (2” x 42” cut on the bias or just use ribbon)
• needle
• thread
• fabric cut into circles (I used my pepper grinder)
• buttons, jewels or whatever you wanna put in the center

Here are my supplies:

I’ve been toting these vintage buttons around for years:

Ready to start:

1. Iron, or if you’re lazy like I am, steam a crease down the center of your fabric/ribbon

2. Trace a small circle onto some fabric and cut it out. Pepper grinder size worked well. Set this aside for later.

3. Thread a needle and leave it attached to a spool. How cute is my needle jar, BTW?

4. Use a very wide stitch (1 1/2”) to sew down the middle of your fabric/ribbon. Keep pulling more thread from your spool so that your fabric/ribbon lays flat. When you get to the end, tie a knot.

5. You can cut the thread from the spool now, but leave yourself a long tail (6” or so). Just to be clear—the “tail” is at the end of the fabric/ribbon you started sewing. Got it?

6. Grab the tail and pull so that your fabric/ribbon ruffles up. It looks like this.

7. Spread out your ruffles as wide or as close as you like. Now here’s the tricky part where I couldn’t get photos. Ugh. Starting at the “tail” end fold your fabric back along the ironed/steamed crease as you simultaneously shape it into a circle and tack it down to the little fabric circle. Continue to arrange it as you like and throw a bunch of stitches through to hold it in place.

8. Stitch or glue buttons onto the center.

Crazy simplem right? And you get these:

Crazy awesome!

This is definitely a project I want to adapt and use at our wedding. It’s quick. It’s easy. And it’s super cheap. It gives lots of visual bang for very little buck. Here are a few places you might see these little beauties at our wedding.

• In my hair
• In my ladies’ hair
• A whole bouquet? (pretty)
• Around our milk glass centerpieces? (I did that for the above photo and i love it!)

Where else do you think we could use ‘em?

P.S. Sorry I don’t have any pics of making the actual seersucker combo. I worked late the day of our birthday party and had to cheat a little—I bought the bow tie and a matching skirt at American Apparel, and then cut the bottom 2 inches off the skirt to make my flower. Originally I was going to make both, so look for a DIY bow tie post in the future!