Little Wool Flower Tutorial with Giveaway

Call me delinquent on the wool flower tutorial and serve me up 50 lashes with a wet noodle!! 

Life (and grandkids, and work, and holidays, and shopping) definitely jumped in front of me the last 10 days and stole my time.   I am though, up for air, and happy to be back!  

Many thanks for all the kind comments
and feedback on the 

Moda Bake Shop Heart's Content Pillow.  

I loved putting that sweet pillow together
and sharing it with everyone!

I hope you find 100 different ways to use the pattern AND the tutorial.  If you missed it, you can read the introduction on my blog here and follow links or go to the Moda Bake shop recipe directly by clicking here.

Now to share a quick (well as quick as I can be ;) tutorial for the little wool flowers that adorned the Heart's Content pillow.
The flowers are really very basic and will probably work best if you use your own style - but I'll share with you how I put them together. 

Supplies:

• Start with some quality wool.  I used Bunny Hill Designs Pastel Wools and sliced them into 1/4" by 8" strips (longer is ok too).
• You'll also need some scraps of the pastel wools for flower accents.
• A few buttons, nothing fancy (although fancy flower buttons would look sweet!)
• Some good quality thread - I used Aurifil Mako Cotton 12 Wt thread - it never lets me down.  You could also use Aurifil Lana Wool or Aurifil Floss.
• You'll need a scrap of freezer paper to prepare some small wool accents
• You'll also need a good needle - I use Bohin Crewel/Embroidery Needles in Size 5 (my fav)
• It's always helpful if you have a pair of serrated edge scissors (Elan are my fav but I hear that Karen K. Buckley's Perfect Scissors are fantastic too)

Start by cutting one or two strips of each of the pastel wool colors.

I used a rotary cutter and ruler to cut mine about 1/4" wide by whatever length wool you have.
If you need more wool than a single strip provides, just cut more!

Lets make the pink flower for the tutorial sample:

Supplies for the pink flower:

Lets start by making the looped section of the flower.  Thread and knot a 12" length of thread.

Aurifil Mako 12Wt in color #2375 matched the Bunny Hill Bright Pink wool perfectly.  

Now fold over one edge of the wool, making about a 1" loop.  Stitch up through the double layer and back down again.

Make another loop, it doesn't matter if it twists.  Stitch up through all layers and back down again. 

If you want to secure it in a certain position, take another stay stitch to hold the loop at the desired location.

Keep looping and stitching until you're happy with the placement and fullness of the flower.   When you're satisfied, take a couple of short stitches on the bottom side of the flower to secure / knot.

Now, lets prepare some "greens" to be stitched behind the pink loops.

My looped section worked out to be appx 2" in diameter.  So I targeted the same size for the greens.

I marked a 2" square on freezer paper and drew a circle within it.

I cut out around the circle leaving at least a 1/4" extra outside of the pencil line.

 Place the rough cut freezer paper onto the wool (shiny side down) and press using a medium heat, dry iron. 

Hold the iron still for 5-8 seconds or until the freezer paper sticks to the wool. 

NOTE: Use care to NOT burn the wool (an iron that is too hot could burn the wool fibers).

Using serrated edge scissors (they work best because they don't push the wool), cut on the drawn circle.  Leave the freezer paper attached for now.

Once the circle is cut out, trim some V's into the circle all the way around.  You can see I marked mine with a pencil before beginning.  This is not required, but OK if it makes you more comfortable.

Here is an image with the larger V's cut out.

Next cut out some more V's all the way around.  Again it really doesn't matter exactly where or how deep you cut.  It will be beautiful!

Once you've finished the 2nd round of V's, you can remove the freezer paper and you have created one background green.  I used two on my pink flower - just to make it more full.   Prepare a 2nd green if you so desire.

(The color is really off on the picture below - my apologies).  

OK, now stitch the green background to the bottom of your looped flower.  Just take two stitches through all layers to secure.  Add a 2nd green background if you like.

Once you've stitched your 2nd green, flip the flower, add a button and secure it in place with a few stitches.  Knot the thread on the back side of the flower and leave thread attached so you can use it to secure the flower to the pillow.

Now that you've made the pink flower, the others are pretty much the same, except I choose to use a variety of colors and add top accents rather than greens.   

On the multicolored flower below,  I snipped (on an angle) the pale pink loops when I was done stitching.  That gave it a neat look.

On the blue and yellow flower I left a long tail and used a pink accent on top.
It's so cute.

Make more flowers if you like -- be creative and have fun!
Attach the flowers to the pillow with the excess thread.

Speaking of having fun -- how about a giveaway?
*
I have several strips of Bunny Hill Wool remnants leftover for one lucky reader.
*
These strips are about 4" wide and roughly 8" to 12" in length.  They would work perfectly for making wool flowers.

To enter the giveaway, leave a comment below letting me know what quilting project you are currently working on.   Are you a no-reply blogger?  If so, please leave an email address too!

For an extra (optional) entry, hop over to the Redbird Quilt Co Facebook page and share the Redbird Quilt Co wool flower tutorial announcement with your Facebook friends.  Be sure to 'Like' and leave a comment on the Facebook post letting me know you shared. 

The giveaway is open until 11pm EST Sunday, December 7th and a a winner will be announced Monday, December 8th.

I leave you with a beautiful picture that my very talented sister Michele took just this morning at her country home in Pennsylvania, USA. 

A Northern Cardinal, our favorite bird and a reminder that Mom is always watching over us.

Enjoy!

Image Courtesy Michele Morningstar aka my very talented sister!

Thanks for stopping by.

Hugs,

Karen

PS - don't forget, you can follow me on Pinterest and Instragram and Twitter too!