Easy Fabric Flowers from Old T-shirts

Fabric flowers from old t-shirts

 Do you have any pieces of old clothing that you need to get rid of but they really aren't even fit for Goodwill?  Here's what you do: Cut them up and make some of these gorgeous fabric flowers with them... I did this with a few t-shirts recently and I'm HOOKED!  I wish I had some more old clothes.. I would love to try to make these out of all kinds of different materials.. because I'm sure each flower would look different when you use different types of material. 

Here is a few different things you can use to make these.. old or damaged:

• shirts
•  jeans
• slacks
•  dress shirts
• sheets or pillowcases
• towels
• handkerchiefs
• fabric remnants
• curtains
• shower curtains
• fabric remnants

  The technique to make each one is the same but there are things you can do to vary the look of them. These particular ones were made with just a regular straight edged strip of material that was about 1.5 inches wide by about a yard (my t-shirts are large). I did a running stitch down one edge, gathered the strip and and then rolled them together,  just like if you were making cinnamon rolls.  Once rolled, I glued each one to a felt circle and viola!

rolled fabric flowers from old t-shirts

The width and length of each strip will determine the size. I wouldn't recommend using a strip that is over 2 inches wide because then it just looks kind of floppy..The length of the strip will determine the size. The longer, the larger your flower will be. You can use multiple shorter strips to make one longer strip.

 Here is another photo of some more made the same way.......

These were made the exact same way but I cut a scalloped edge on each one, sewed, gathered and rolled.

If you take the strip and instead of on one edge cutting scallops, cut horizontal strips all the way down, and then stitch and roll....you will come out with something like this:

I like this one because it kind of looks like a  little pom pom.. to make it even more realistic you can do the same thing but cut pointed edges on each strip.  I think it would come out looking sort of like a dahlia or other flowers that look similar to that.

So you can definitely come up with all kinds of different looks depending on how you decide to do one edge of the strip before doing the stitch.  I love playing around and seeing what I can come up with.

Of course, the best thing I love about these is that they were virtually free to make.. so next time you get ready to throw out that old ripped shirt, keep it and make some pretty flowers!!

I hope you enjoyed this post.. if you are interested in a more detailed tutorial along with lots of ideas about what you can do with your finished flowers, see my tutorial here. 

Thank you so much for dropping by!