DIY Fabric Flower Bouquet

(c) danielle marie photography

Disclaimer: as cute as these are, I don't recommend them if you don't have much time left before your wedding or if you don't have much sit down time- they're incredibly time consuming.

But if you do have the time to do them- yayy! here's how:

I did the purple and white flowers using this tutorial and the green and deep purple with variations of this one
20 more tutorials to check out

What you'll need:

• Variety of fabrics in your wedding colors (type is dependent upon which style you choose)
• Neutral fabric to use as a base
• Pearl pins
• Hot glue gun and sticks (optional E6000 or Aleene's Tacky Glue)
• Ribbon
• Floral foam half-spheres (1 large for you and small ones for each of your bridesmaids)
• A long 1" wooden dowel cut into 6" sections and chiseled to a point on one end (thank God for my 17 year old brother that loves to destroy things with knives)
• Decorative buttons or brooches to add final touches
• A lot of time and patience

Putting together the bouquet: ( I apologize that I don't have step by step images, hopefully I can get some soon!)

1. After making your first few flowers, determine how many of each style you'll need to cover all of the foam half-spheres.  Make those flowers plus a few extra of each to be safe. 
2. When you're ready to put the bouquet together, start by covering the foam with the neutral fabric.  Cover the foam with a generous amount of hot glue on the round side then immediately and tightly wrap the fabric around it.  
3. Push the chiseled end of the dowel into the center of the flat side of the foam about 1 1/2".  Then pull it out, put hot glue (or E 6000,tacky glue, etc) around the end, push back into foam and hold until dry.  Then pin down the edges of the neutral fabric you used to cover the other side of the foam tightly near the dowel and trim excess.  
4. Your next step is to cover the dowel with ribbon.  I glued the end of the ribbon over the end of the dowel with just a little extra hanging over.  Take that extra and hold it against the dowel, then take the rest of the ribbon and wrap it tightly up the dowel until you reach the area that meets the foam, hot gluing it down as you go.  Pin the ribbon securely into the foam.  
5. You're now ready to pin all your flowers onto your base.  Play around with it until it's perfect, moving them to where they all complement each other.   
6. Then either pin flowers to the flat side of the foam, or as you can see how I did in the picture, drape ribbon under it,  pinning as you go, finishing it off with a bow tied about where the dowel meets the foam.

 

 

(c) danielle marie photography

If you'd rather purchase your fabric flower bouquets than make them, they aren't cheap, but there are some really beautiful ones on Etsy