Mood DIY: Fabric Flower Bouquet

To follow up yesterday’s wedding garter post, I decided to create a bridal bouquet! They’re much easier to make than you’d think, and unlike real flowers, fabric petals last forever.

Since this DIY calls for burning the edges of the “petals,” the trickiest part was finding the right fabric types. I must have taken a lighter to 30 different swatches before narrowing down my list to the final 12. Natural fibers, of course, burn and blacken, so I only tested synthetic fabrics, which tend more to melt. My favorites to work with were Mood’s charmeuses. Not only did they melt evenly, but they curled perfectly to look like flower petals!

Neutral Solids

• Ivory Solid Polyester Satin
• Ivory Brilliant Colors Poly Satin
• Ivory Solid Charmeuse
• Ivory Polyester Charmeuse
• White Solid Silk-Look

Other Solids

• Light Pink Solid Charmeuse
• Pewter Solid Charmeuse

Lace/Netting

• Ivory Diamonds Chantilly Lace
• Nude Floral Nylon Lace
• Mink Polka Dots Tulle & Crinoline
• Peach Diamond Net Nylon Tulle
• Ivory Nylon Net Tulle

To start, I cut out roughly a million circles of vary sizes from each fabric (okay, maybe 15 each). I definitely cut out more than I needed, since some petals came out nicer than others and I wanted plenty to choose from when I arranged the bouquet. The largest were about 4″ across, while the smallest were the size of a quarter. I didn’t worry about the shape too much, since they looked a little more organic when some were slightly oval or irregular.

After I had all my shapes cut, I slowly rotated each through a flame. Some I let burn more than others, playing around with the forms the fabric took. In the photo below, you can see the bottom petal has more puckers than the others. For that one, I ran the lighter beneath the fabric in addition to the edges. Once I had enough petals to make a flower, I rummaged around in one of Mood’s small Bag o’ Buttons and sewed a small pearl button into the center, stitching all the petals together.

I repeated this until I had enough flowers to cover the bouquet base, which I made with a 15″ circle of leftover satin and a handful of fiber fill.

I added some lace and netting to some flowers and used several different buttons as centerpieces to run with the somewhat vintage feel that the petal colors were giving off.

To attach each flower to the base, I simply inserted a pin beneath each button. This gave me the freedom to move flowers around and rearrange them as often as I’d like. They stayed fairly well, but if I was making one that I’d want to keep long term, I might add a few dots of hot glue as well.

As I added more and more, I really loved the layering effect that was happening. My base was small, but I was surprised that I only needed about 15 flowers to make the bouquet look full!

For the ‘stem’ I added a few wooden dowels into the base and wrapped them with some double face French satin ribbon. I may add a strip of burlap and some cotton lace to the bow as well. What do you think? Tell me in the comments!