Taffeta Flower Tutorial

I saw this idea on one of my very favorite blogs, "Make It and Love It". I think Ashley (the author of Make It and Love It) and I would be very good friends if we actually knew each other! I just really admire her blog, blog's pictures, sewing skills, and all her ideas.

Though this was not an original idea of mine, I wanted to make my own tutorial for it because I had some trouble with a few steps and found some solutions that worked for me and might work for you, too!

You will need taffeta (I bought 1/8 of a yard which was more than enough for two headbands and a pin), felt, beads, a headband, candle, and a glue gun.

I used my low-temp glue gun. I highly recommend that against singeing your fingertips on the regular gun.

Cut the taffeta into circles/ovals of varying sizes. I used 3-4 circles for each flower.

Now you need to get your candle going.

I do not recommend children help with this project! I burned my fingers once or twice.

You want to hold each taffeta circle above the flame just until it starts to melt. The edges of my circles did turn black in some spots. If you don't like this, go ahead and cut them off and try again, holding the circle further from the flame.

Here are my melted circles:

To assemble the flowers, I just stacked the circles in descending sizes (smallest on top) and hot-glued each circle to the middle of the last. Then I put a dot of hot glue on the top circle and put beads on top.

I free-hand cut some leaves out of the felt.

I melted the edges of the felt in the candle, too. At first, I just held the felt pieces with my fingers.

Then I got smart and found a kitchen utensil to help me protect my hands.

A picture of the melted leaves:

I hot glued the flowers and leaves to a stretchy headband. Then I put extra hot glue on the back to keep it all together and to keep it from sliding around while wearing it!

Here is a picture of me wearing the headband in my hair. My hair doesn't look this sloppy from the front, I promise!

I used one flower to make a pin. To do this, just hot glue the flower and leaves to a pin back.

Here's the finished pin:

Here's another picture of one of the headbands! I used different beads on this one:

I really love making things I can wear! I have forgotten how much I love doing crafts...I guess I've been doing too much sewing lately!