Have you ever visited a Quilt exhibition and you fell in love with a Floral Quilt with textured applique flowers and you wondered how to make them? That has happened to me, and today I’m sharing the easy steps to follow to How To Make A Ruched Fabric Flower.
Some appliques flower techniques might look so difficult to make, but when you take a look to the easy steps to follow to make it, you’ll be amazed and you won’t stop to make them.
Patchwork flowers always look amazing on everything, once you learn to make them you can use them to decorate a pillowcase, a quilt or a bag, and you can be sure they will become the center of attention for quilters, textile art and everyone who loves textile art.
Today I will share the easy steps to make two different flowers, each one will be a block for the Floral Quilt. On the video you can follow the steps I did to sew the 4 borders on a block, you can follow the same steps to sew on the 4 borders on each block for the quilt (9).
How To Make The Applique of Steams And Leaves For A Quilt
If you’re new to my blog, you can read the two previous blog post where I share the steps to follow to applique stems and leaves, the same techniques will be used on all the blocks for this quilt.
Flower Applique Small Quilt To Make and Flower Small Quilt To Make Block # 2
How To Make A Ruched Fabric Flower
How To Make Ruching Strip
1 – Cut a 1 1/2 ” bias strip of fabric
2 – Fold the sides of the fabric strip toward the center so they meet in the middle, you can gently press the strip with a warm iron or with your fingernail. This is the back of the strip.
3 – Mark – Use a pencil or marker for fabrics to draw a line with 90 degrees along, you can do this step on the front or on the back of the strip.
4 – Make running stitches – With a strong thread work with running stitches along the drawn line, you can do this step with a matching color thread or with a beige thread.
5 – Stitch for a few inches, then stop and you can pull out the thread to gather the strip into petals, continue to keep doing some more stitches until you finish stitching on all the strip.
6 – Curl – Fold the start of the strip to the back and make a couple of stitches, lay the gathered strip on the bottom point of the circle for the flower and pinch a pin, continue to lay the gathered strip along the line of the circle, when you meet the point where you start, continue to the second row to the center, pinch some pins as you keep laying the gathered strip until you reach the center of the flower.
When you reach the center of the flower, fold the end of the strip to the back and pinch a pin to hold the strip in its place.
7 – With a single thread on your needle, make some stitches to applique the flower to the fabric.
===> Click here to download the free pattern <===
How To Make A Fabric Pleated Flower.
1 – Cut the piece of fabric –
2 – Fold 1/2 on one side of the strip to the back and press gently with your fingernail or with a warm iron.
3 – Fold the two edges 1/4 ” to the back and press gently with your fingernail or with a warm iron.
4 – Start at one end of the strip and fold the bottom over to create a pleat. Pinch with your fingers to hold in place.
5 – Make another pleat and pinch with your fingers, you can pinch a pin to help you to keep the pleats in place.
6 – Keep making pleats until you reach the other end of the strip of fabric. As this is a single row flower, it only takes a few pleats to make the flower.
7 – Lay the pleated flower on the block and pinch a few pins to keep it in place, with your needle and thread, make a few stitches to do the applique of the flower on the block.
8 – To finish this flower, you will need to do the applique of the green piece to cover the bottom of the pleated flower.
Closing
Making a small quilt is always a good and nice project to make, I hope you enjoy these tutorials where I share the easy steps to make two different styles of applique flowers.
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