Painted Fabric Flower Wreath

Sep 26

Make a gorgeous floral wreath from hand-painted fabrics or patterned quilting cottons plus a few extra supplies. This darling project adds an artful flair to your front door to welcome springtime visitors, but would also be beautiful as a piece of wall art for any sunny room!

Want to learn how to put it together? Let’s do it!

Materials

18” diameter styrofoam wreath form
A variety of hand-painted cotton fabrics—develop your very own stash of hand painted and printed fabrics with me here! You can also use your stash of quilting cotton prints.
Fabric scissors
Pearl cotton thread, size 5, (any color or size will do, the thread just needs to be strong)
Embroidery needle with an eye large enough to thread the pearl cotton easily
A bit of lace fabric. I used a spool of 6” wide lace sold in the floral department
Glue stick (optional)
Coin thimble
Ball point sewing pins - about 60 multicolored

Instructions

Step 1: Cut Flower Parts

Use fabric scissors to cut roughly shaped circles, ovals and random organic round and angled shapes from your painted fabrics. Anything that reminds you of a petal or shape in a flower will work! It’s okay if you have jagged bits and frayed edges; they actually add to the overall scrappy, sweet style. For each flower, cut one large shape (about 4-5” diameter) in the first fabric and one smaller shape (about 2-3” diameter) in another painted fabric. Layer together and set aside. Cut enough pairs to create about 50 flowers—50 large and 50 small.

Cut organic shapes from the lace fabric in all different sizes — cut 50.

Step 2: Layer Flowers

Take 1 piece of lace, 1 large round, and 1 small round and layer them together. The shapes can be centered or off-set, look at the shapes and textures in the paint to decide how to arrange each bloom. Use the glue stick to put a dot of glue on the back side of the top two layers, pressing them together for a few seconds to make the pieces stick. Set aside to dry. Do this for all 50 flowers.

Step 3: Stitch Flowers

Thread a length (about 16”) of pearl cotton on your sewing needle. Wearing a coin thimble, bring the thread up from the back of the fabric flower, leaving a 5” tail of thread. Make 2 or 3 large stitches around the middle area of the flower, ending with the working end of the thread at the back side of the flower. Grab both tails of the thread and cinch tightly to gather the flower into a slightly ruffled shape. Tie a double knot to hold the gather in place. Trim the leftover threads to about 2.5.” Do this for all 50 flowers.

Tip: You can thread lots of needles in advance and stick them in a pincushion or needlebook, ready to go. That way you don’t have to slow down to rethread a needle as often and can whip out flowers!

Step 4: Pin Flowers onto Wreath Form

Use colorful ball head pins to attach the flowers to the foam wreath form. Use several pins, anchoring the flowers in different places on the blossom to help the flower stick onto the curved edges of foam wreath.