Hey y’all, I’m back today with another felt flower tutorial. Today I’m going to show you how I make a felt peony.
And in case you’d rather download the petal shapes instead of eyeballing them from my images, I have the entire file for all these flowers available for purchase here.
Here’s how I did the peony.
You’ll need:
- 1 sheet of 9×12 felt in the color you want your peony, and some scraps of green. For this one I used Carnation and Moss from this shop. I prefer the wool blend felt (which is hard to find in stores) because it cuts cleaner, and particularly for this flower it’s easier to get those ruffled edges with a trick I’ll show you in the tutorial.
- Floral wire. I prefer the cloth covered kind for these
- Hot glue gun. Do your fingers a favor and get the low temp kind.
Note – if you wanted to, you could hand sew these. That’s the method I would recommend if you want to make them to embellish clothing. And then either use fabric that won’t fray, like fleece or knit, or add fray check to the edges after you make the flower if you use other fabric.
One more note – flowers in nature aren’t perfect. Allow yourself some imperfections while making these, and you’ll get a more realistic looking flower. Remember to have fun!
You’ll need 5 different sized petals. As you can see below, the smallest are kind of a rounded rectangle, and the largest are slightly squashed circles. You need 4 of the smallest two sizes and 6 of the next 3 sizes. It helps to sketch these on paper to make templates. And for the top edge, I cut it out free hand, just moving the scissors in a wavy kind of motion to make each petal a little different from the others.
You’ll also need a calyx that can be 4 or 5 pointed.
Set aside one of the smallest petals. Take all but the largest petals and cut a vertical slit in each one on the end about 3/4 inches long.
On the largest petals, cut two slits. If you imagine the petal as a clock, the slits are cut at about 4:30 and 7:30.
Overlap the edges of each slit and add a dot of glue so that the petals cup.
Take the small petal you set aside and wrap it around the end of the floral wire.
Then starting with the smallest to the largest petals, glue the cupped petals to the flower, rotating it and overlapping the edges of each petal slightly with the next petal.
When you’re done it will look like the picture above.
Poke a hole in the calyx and slip it onto the wire stem, then glue.
Below is what the flower looks like at this stage. But as I said above, I have a trick to give it that ruffled wrinkly look that real peonies have. It’s a spray bottle of water. Lightly mist the flower with water, getting it damp but not soaked.
The wool felt will wrinkle slightly, and you can further shape the damp wool with your fingers. Then let it dry without touching it any more, and the wool will retain its shape.
Look out for more flower tutorials to come – like I said, I’ve made a bunch of these!
Lucy Bates
Love it and Thank you!
Janet Cozens
Hi there Mel,Everyone.
Lovely flowers 🌹🌹🌹 Mel😊
I only wish I could get into my crafting room hehehe it’s full right up with Bedroom furniture here at the moment as we are are having new carpet and New Bed which hopefully will arrive here Wednesday fingers crossed and eye’s crossed as well lol lol😀
happy Sewing Mel, Everyone xxxx