Tutorial: How to Make an Elegant Satin Flower Pin

Last week I shared the ruffled bag I made for my ballet slippers, and promised I’d be back with a tutorial on how to make the lovely pink flower pin!

And today is the day!

These flower pins are nothing new if you’ve been around blogland for awhile. But…Just in case you’d like to know how I do it – here you go! They are really easy – promise.

How to Make: An Elegant “Satin” Flower Pin {or barrette}

You’ll need:

fabric {a word on that in a moment}
scissors
candle and something to light it with
needle
thread
pearls and/or seed beads {or whatever you’d like in the middle}
pin for the back {or small barrette if you’d prefer}

Now the fabric… I’ve seen it around blogland that people use satin for these flowers. I’ve had limited success with true satin, but I’ve had fantastic success with dress lining! I prefer acetate, but our JoAnn’s doesn’t carry that anymore. Boo. So polyester will have to do. Go to the dress lining section of your fabric store and buy yourself a small piece. Also check the remnants. Very often I find this stuff in the remnants, and since you need only a little, one remnant will go a long way!

{I will get tons of flowers out of this big piece of fabric!}

I first start buy cutting squares of fabric from the big piece. I like to graduate them big to small. My biggest piece was around 4″ across and my smallest around 2″ across. The more layers, the fuller the flower! This one is made with 6 layers, and I think it’s just about perfect. If you make a bigger flower, you’ll want to make more layers.

Then take your squares and round them into circles. They don’t have to be perfect or anything like that.

Next… Get your candle lit! I just use a small votive candle. Don’t use anything with too big of a flame!

Let’s melt the edges. Hold the edge of your fabric circle pretty much straight above the flame. The heat is what melts the fabric, so you don’t want to stick it in the flame. This stuff is flammable so please be careful. Turn your circle as you go.

You could certainly leave your circles just like that. But sometimes I’ll add a little something more to them. Say…two of the circles are about the same size and you want one smaller. Or…you want to add a little bit of character.

Then I’ll hold the circle with the middle of the circle over the flame. So now your circle is perpendicular to the flame. Again, you just need a little heat, so don’t hold it too low over the flame. You’ll see the material start to pucker up. You can do this in several places if you’d like.

Here’s what mine looked like after I was finished puckering it.

Now…we all make mistakes, so if you get it too close to the flame, or leave it just a smidge too long over the heat…

…have no fear! As long as it’s not the smallest circle {or the hole is really huge!}, when you layer your flower together, you’ll not even notice the hole. No biggie.

Once you get all your edges melted and added any puckers, stack them all together!

Now’s the time to make sure you’re liking the way everything looks. If you need another layer or want to pucker one of your layers or anything like that, do it now.

Because next we’re going to sew it together.

Get out your needle and thread. I usually use white or cream thread. You don’t want the thread to be obvious when you stitch the beads on.

Now pick up your flower and find the center. I usually use my thumbnail to hold it right at the center. Then when I push my needle up, I use my nail as the guide to make it come up where I want it.

Now stitch! I like to do a very small “x.” You don’t want this to be big because you’ll do your beading over it. Keep it small. I probably make 5 or so “x’s.”

Pretty!!

You’re almost finished!

Time to add the center beads.

A lot of times I’ll just do 3 small silver seed beads, but since this pin was for my ballet bag, pearls just felt right.

Play with your beads in the center of your flower until you have an idea of what you like.

Then stitch them on! No special instructions here, but do be sure that you use your beads to hide the center stitching. I also like to make sure that the beads so that you can’t see the stitching or the holes. See how you can see the holes on the picture above? I don’t want it to look like that once I’m finished, so I make sure to turn the beads so those holes are on the sidse.

For my pin, I ended up using three pearls and three silver seed beads.

When you’re finished with that, grab one of these pins and stitch it on the back. You can go through several layers of your flower for security, just be mindful you don’t go through too many because you don’t want the thread to show on the front.

If you prefer a barrette, I like to use the alligator pinch clips like these and glue it on the back with Fabri-tac. I do this all the time with flowers for Miss M’s hair.