Easy Scrap Fabric Flowers

One really cute way to make something lovely out of scrap fabric (that you might otherwise bin) is to make scrap fabric flowers.

You can add a pin to the back and give or wear them as brooches, or you can sew them directly onto a hat, bag or lapel as a permanent accessory.

There are lots of ways to make these. Many of the methods I’ve seen before though involve layers of larger pieces of fabric cut out in a flower shape.

But what if your scraps are too small for that?

An updated version of this post appears on our sister blog Upcycle My Stuff along with a video tutorial and a second method for making these easy scrap fabric flowers!

Here is how I made mine with pretty small scraps, they were all no more than 1-3 inches at their longest.

I made two. The one above was made out of scraps of tweed; two fabric sample swatches (the grey and royal blue thicker material); and some scraps of a man’s dress shirt (the medium blue colour).

This second one was made with all one fabric, but some of it was a trimming that I had just cut off and saved and the rest was the corners that I cut off to make the gusset of a quilted bag.

I saved those gusset scraps, so they already had quilt batting on the back and had been quilted (a bit haphazardly as I am still learning!).

Step 1: Make your Scrap Fabric “Petals”

This post contains affiliate links – please see my disclosure policy for more details.

So for both I started off with making the petals of the flowers.

For the tweed/blue one I decided to make them a bit more pointy and for the red and cream one a bit more rounded.

What shape you choose will most likely be determined by the shape of your scraps to be honest but either way just use your rotary cutter to get them the shape you want.

For the blue one the longest petal was 2 3/4″ long and the shortest was 1 1/2″. For the red and cream one the shortest was 1 1/2″ and the longest was 2″.

For the cream and red one I literally stopped making petals when I ran out of that particular type of fabric scrap, so I had 6 in total. For the other one I was doing more of a colour family thing so I just layered them up until I felt like I liked how big it was.

Step 2: Sew the edges of your Petals

Next I used a zigzag stitch around the edge of each of my petals. I used a shorter stitch for the thin men’s shirt cotton and a longer one for the tweed and quilted fabrics.

These scrap fabric flowers are actually a great project for beginner sewers or might-as-well-be-beginner sewers – like me! – as you can practice different stitches and turning the fabric in your machine etc.

Step 3: Hand Sew Your Flower Together

To assemble your scrap fabric flower, all you have to do is lay out your petals in the design you like and pick out a pretty button (or several) to finish it off.

For the cream and red one I hand stitched them all into place at once as there weren’t many petals.

For the tweed & blue one I stitched the layers of petals together in the centre first before adding the button in the middle.

Step 5: Add a backing (optional)

Depending what you plan to do with your scrap fabric flowers you can choose to add a backing to finish it off. I am partial to a bit of sticky back felt myself for this kind of thing.

You can also sew on a brooch pin to make this a removable brooch.

If however you are planning to stitch these scrap fabric flowers straight onto another project like a bag or a hat or something you may not need any backing at all.

I’m pretty happy with how these turned out but I’m not sure where I’ll use them yet. I’ll definitely be making more though!

I would love to see your scrap fabric flowers too! Feel free to drop me a comment or find me on instagram or pinterest to share your photos!

Looking for a project to use up the tiny trimmings leftover from this project? How about a super scrappy bookmark?

If you want to save this idea for later, don’t forget to pin it to your Scrap Fabric Board!

I’m super excited to say this post will be featured in a Free E-book on beginner’s crafts by FaveCrafts very soon! It’s not up yet but when it is you should be able to find it here.