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Scrunchy Flower Tutorial

I put my little flower on a drawstring bag.  And just a little tidbit for you: drawstrings are one of my most fav things in the world to make!  My scrunchy flowers have been transformed into broaches, headbands, cupcake toppers (on onsies) and bag accents of course.  I love, love, love to make them.  Which is the reason why I picked this as my first tutorial.  Now, take a deep breath, relax, and let your creative juices flow...

Okay girls, pick out some delicious fabric.  I typically use three different fabrics & one coordinating tulle.  If you cut the fabric into nice little squares you can pin them together and only make one cut (for the fabric part).  I then take a scrap of paper and free hand cut out a flower (5 petals works best).  This will be your amazing pattern.  Look, the closest thing to me at the time was a Threads magazine.  I pulled out the subscription flyer and used that as my template.  This picture only shows two different fabrics, but that's not the standard.  I simply grabbed these two to take pictures of and thought they had good contrast to show up in the picture.  My flowers have 6 layers of fabric, 2 from each color.  Layers of tulle are also added, but just hold on for that part Darling.

After cutting out the flowers, I use Fray Check around all the edges.  This will keep them from unraveling.  It goes rather fast if you keep them pinned together.  Just give that bottle a grand squeeze so lots will come out at once and soak all your layers.  Set aside.  Set aside far away actually.  They may be cute, but have a strong aroma from the Fray Check.  Tough on a princess nose! 

Now comes the top secret, super fancy part to making the scrunchy flower look scrunchy...Spray all the flowers with liquid starch.  Mine are actually drenched in starch on the entire flower.  I wad them up,

then press them with a hot iron.  I usually wiggle the iron for a few seconds, lift it up to "rescrunch", then press again.  I do this until they are completely dry.  The heat of the iron will dry the starch and set in the  wrinkles (actually one of the few times in life that the more wrinkles the better).  Be careful to not burn the fabric.  Oh, and don't forget to turn off the steam.  It will dry out the fabric faster obviously.

Your flower pieces should come out looking like this.  I know it's not cute now, but keep going girl!  You're almost there.

Now here goes the most challenging part of the process.  Making the tulle layers.  You will need just as many tulle pieces as fabric pieces, plus one.  I actually take my flower pattern (aka Threads' subscription card that I cut up earlier) and use this template again.  I cut around it (slightly larger) just in the circular shape.  You can see that by no means is this a perfect circle.  She's an eccentric, lop-sided one with flare!  I randomly run thread stitches through the center in a triangle shape.  There's no right or wrong way to do this.  After getting back to your starting point, pull the thread tight and knot it off. 

Here's what the end result looks like.  The whole point is to give the tulle some volume/pleats which will in turn give the scrunchy flower volume.  You want your flower to stand out!!!!

Now it's time to get the party started.  I always go in the same order, only because I'm funny like that.  Start out with fabric #1 on bottom, top with tulle layer, top with fabric #2, top with tulle layer, top with fabric #3, top with tulle layer.  Continue this process until you use all the fabric and tulle.  Just for fun, I usually put two layers of tulle on top.  Sometimes, on my wild days, I will add double layers of tulle on the last layer of fabric #1, #2 and #3.  Hold on tight to your little creation--the layers get thick and the tulle as an evil habit of making the layers shift.  When everyone is stacked together I'll add a pin to the center for stability.  I think you can see my little green topped pin in the photo.

Here's a side view of the finished product.  I hand stitch several times through the center to secure all the petals together.  Sit back and breath a sigh of relief.  You did it!!  Okay, I actually did it.  Yea me.

And another peek of what I did with my flower.  The center rhinestone button covers up my stitches.  I think it's precious.

Now this is a show stopper.  This is a pic of the headband I made the week before.  The fabric petals were not ironed to be scrunchy if you look close enough.  Why...  Only because it was a sunny day and we were outside for endless hours.  What's a mommy to do to pass the time?  I knew the neighbors would really talk if my ironing board were on the driveway, so I skipped this step just to save my reputation.  Ha!Ha!  This little one adored her surprise gift.  Helped with the crazy hair day of a crazy child.  Love the flare of the sunglasses.  Not even my idea by the way.

Happy sewing and crafting to you.

Let me know what you think...

Anyone like the tutorial????  The suspense is killing me!