How to make simple petaled flowers with wire ribbon of any width or with strips of fabric.
These are some of the flowers I have made with this method. Upper left is a silk fabric flower made from a strip, below that are two flowers made from 1.5″ wired ribbon and the flower stems on the right are from 3/4″ wide wired ribbon.
Flower from fabric
To make the flower Claudine is wearing on her blouse. I used some leftover silk fabric from the hat.
I used a Rotary cutter blade with a Zig-Zag cutting edge to cut a long 2″ wide bias strip.
I sewed a running stitch back and forth across the strip creating a Zig-Zag that came about 1/4″ from the edges.
To create the Frayed edge on the petals you need to run your closed finger and thumb down the cut edges of the fabric.
I gathered up the stitch, not as tightly as possible but about to 1/2 it original length. I did not knot off incase it needed more or less gathering.
I started at one one end spiraling the fabric and adjusting the gathered to make circles of petals. Here there are 5 petals in the first circle.
For the second circle, I loosened the gathers to create a larger circle.
I did the same thing with the third circle.
When I got to the end, I started stitching thru the layers to hold things together but not so that the stitches showed.
I then sewed the flower onto a circle of crinoline that was covered with a piece of the pink lace just so it matched the flower. I tack stitched this to the blouse.
1 1/2″ Wired ribbon flowers
This is a seven petal flower (I know most flowers don’t have seven petals but that is how much ribbon I had.
I marked out the Zig-Zag for this one as per the drawing in the last section. Each petal for this flower takes one widths length for each petal. I also prepped a piece of wire and glued it to a bundle of stamen.
I sewed the running stitch following the marks and gathered them. I made sure the green side was down and the pinker side was out.
I used some Bacon’s Fabric Tac glue to glue one end of the gathered ribbon to the stamen bundle.
When dry I wrapped the rest of the ribbon around the bundle and the gathering thread around that. I also made 5 calyx by cutting some lengths of green ribbon and folding the wired edge down to the center to make some triangles.
I tightened the thread and use it to shape the base of the flower into the right shape. Then knotted off and then tacked the calyx pieces into place just being the petals.
I covered the remainder of the wire stem with green florist tape. The wire in the caylx makes it possible to shape each one.
5 petal wired ribbon flower
This sew of ribbon flowers was made the same way the last flower was made except that the ribbon was only 3/4-7/8″ wide and the stamen was a single not a bundle and no calyx. I used brown florist tape to cover the wire. I used one long piece of wire for the major stem and shorter pieces for each flower.
I also added a few silk leaves. I did not cut the wire in half but built each stem from the ends towards the middle. Each flower has 5 petals except for the little buds at the ends and they have three.
Because the flower stems are connected in the middle is was easy to slide the base of the stem under the ribbon and take one or two stitches to keep it standing up. I added one little bundle of cherries to the base of the flowers inside the brim.
Multiple rows of petals in increasing sizes
This flower has 4 rows of ever increasing petal sizes all from 1.5″ wired ribbon.
Each row of this flower was made the same way as the other wired ribbon flowers the only difference is that the zig-zag stitch does not go back and forth at a 45° angle. For each row it gets more and more stretched out.
Each piece of ribbon is longer than the first. The first one is 13.75″ long, the second one is 15″, the third one is 16.25″ and the last one is 22.5. Because you make the same # of Zig-Zags each row of petals is larger.
The method I used below is a short cut, I used the crimps in the wire as targets for the point of the Zig-Zag stitch instead of drawing a line to follow for the gathering stitch. So, all the lengths of ribbon need to be folded up into 5 equal sections, see the photo above.
Then each piece of folded ribbon was crimped in the middle.
A running stitch was sewn back and forth between each crimp in the edge wire.
I did not use a bundle of stamen for this flower I used a spiral of crimped and cartridge pleated ribbon to make the center. The shortest length of ribbon was gathered to fit around the flower center.
This was glued and sewn to the center. I length of stem wire was glued into the center of the flower’s center.
Then the next largest set of petals was added around that.
The were adjusted so the newest row petals were between the first rows.
I clipped off the ribbon below the level of the center.
The same thing was done with the third row.
Then the last was added. This time the points of the green base was gathered until it was tight to the wire, it was not cut off.
All the petals were shaped by pinching the wire in the center of each petal to give each petal a pointed shape.