Fabric carnation tutorial

You may remember my flowery bouquet I made a while ago. Making these carnations is quite simple and rewarding. Well, here's the tutorial.

You need light jersey with a lot of elastic in it for better looks and stretch for that matter.

Cut a long, thin strip. I had a metre of the jersey but in order to make the strip longer I cut all around it without stopping and the above piece has about 3,70 metres. The longer the strip, the thicker the flower. Remember, it should be about 1 or 2 cm wide.

Start wrapping it around your hand. While doing it, pull the strip tightly.

Jersey tends to curl up and that would add up to the looks of the flowers and make them more beautiful.

Here it is all rolled up.

Take it off carefully and holding it firmly tie a knot around it with a previously cut short strip.

When it is secured. Cut the upper part.

Like this.

Here's what it looks like. Cut the strips on the other side too.

Now, some of the "petals" will be bigger than others so here you do a little trimming until you make them all even.

A break in the steps for comparison. Here you can see what you'll get if you use a slightly wider and shorter piece of fabric (the pink one being a sturdier cotton).

When you finish trimming both sides, the flower will be left with the middle exposed, so you have to fix that too. Start by pulling the little strips to the other side but not very strongly because if the tie is not tight enough you might pull the strips off, and you also roll them up in your hands to get a nice round flower.

And ta-dah! Here it is!

Now you can take a bamboo stick (plastic stem, or whatever you come up with) insert it inside and make yourself a lovely flower.

And with a couple more of them you can make a bouquet :)

Or you can take a pin and make a brooch as shown in the intro picture.