How to Refashion a Vintage Scarf into a Flower

For those of you who don’t know, I do Internet stuff for a living. Yes, I am leaving it at that; I’m bored just thinking about explaining it right now. Anyways, when work is busy the last thing I want to do at night is continue sitting in front of the computer. That said, when days (or weeks) pass like this with no posts… you can assume I am swamped with work, hating sitting at a desk looking at the Internets and off doing something like yard work or sewing.

Today, I broke my no post run to participate in the Iron Craft challenge. This week’s theme was flowers. You can check out all of the entries in the Flickr group here.

A month or so ago I bought a bunch of vintage scarves at the thrift store with the intent of making J.Crew style flower belts out of them. This was my chance to give one a whirl. The steps on how to make a flower belt are below.

Materials:
• Vintage satin scarf
• Freezer paper
• Thread
• Beads
• Pin back
• Hot glue

Tools
• Iron
• Scissors
• Needle
• Hot glue gun

Start by ironing out your scarf.

Once flat, apply the freezer paper to the scarf shiny side down with your iron.

Trace out a flower pattern onto the freezer paper slightly larger than the size you want your finished flower. Repeat this for a total of 6 flowers.

Cut out the flowers and remove the freezer paper from the back by simply peeling it off. It’s ok if your edges fray, you want it to look unfinished.

Stack your flowers on top of each other varying where the petals are. Pin all layers together on the outsides so they don’t slip as you sew them together.

Use your needle and thread to sew long stitches in the middle of the flower in a circle pattern. With each stitch, pull the thread tight so the petals begin to pull in and bunch up.

When you’ve gone around in a complete circle, come up through the middle and begin securing your beads. Sew as many beads as you’d like  into the middle and then secure the thread with a few final knots to keep everything together.

Glue your pin on to the back of the flower.

Wear your flower on a headband, attach it to a purse, throw some ribbons on to a shirt dress and place the flower on top for a flower belt, or come up with your own way to display it