DIY Fabric Flowers, Part 1

I've been working on some DIY flowers from ribbon, fabric, and buttons. My inspiration came from wanting to do something different for my flowers and finding numerous sellers on etsy with beautiful felt, fabric, and ribbon flowers for bouquets, hair accessories, and many other things. Knowing I could give the whole DIY flower thing a try, I searched for some instructions as a starting point. I came along another blog, Little Birdie Secrets' fabric flower tutorial roundup. I have tried a few of the ribbon flowers, which I will post about later. I think the flowers I am going to talk about today, I came up with myself, but I've looked at so many DIY flower instructions, it's hard to remember. My apologies for non recognized sources.

Here's my favorite flowers so far, and definitely the easiest as well! (Modeling... not the best picture, but I had a final today, so it's really not that bad!)

My supplies were:
A light gauzy type fabric remnant from Joanne's, ($2 for over a dozen flowers! what a steal!)
needle and thread
Pipe cleaners

First, I folded the fabric width-wise to about a 3" strip, and pinned the edge to keep it together. Then, I cut the strip into squares, and pinned the middle of the squares to keep it together. (On the left in the picture).

At first, I used a circle guide to cut the fabric, but then realized for less frustration and a prettier flower, that trimming off the corners and being left with a roundish-oval shape was perfect! I stacked and pinned 5-6 rounds, laying the rounds slightly off-center from each other. Then comes the fun part!

First, thread through the center of the stack and fold in half.

Stich a few times at the center of the fold to hold the crease.

The next step might be a little confusing in words, so hopefully the pictures will help. Basically, you fold/crease/squash the fabric to make a more flower-like shape and stitch the folds to hold the new creases.
First, bring each end of the crease to the center to look something like this:

and this:

When stitching the creases, a more open flower is made by stitching different pairs creases together, which also makes a little "nub" (weird word, but it's the only one I could think of at the moment) for the next step.

The next step is the stem. I made a loop at the end of a pipe cleaner, then stitched it to the flower. I tried a few different ways of attaching the pipe cleaner, but the loop system seemed to work best for me.

Most of the flowers I made were from the 3" squares, but I had a little extra fabric, so I made some 4" ones as well. Both looked great, and you could probably play with the number of rounds in each flower. 5 worked well for me to get a full flower and the most flowers from my fabric. I am going to cover the pipe cleaners with flower tape to make them sturdier, and hopefully they'll hold up well in a bouquet.

So, there it is, my first flower project. Once I get a bouquet done, I will be sure to post pictures! And, expect more instructions on my ribbon and button flowers once I figure out the simplest way to make them.