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Tutorial: Twisted Petal Flower

Yes, another fabric flower! This is the one I used to decorate Yuki’s Blossom by Blossom Dress. I just made the flowers and stitched them directly to the dress, but you can use this to decorate just about anything – a shirt, a bag, or you can stitch it to a headband, a pin backing, etc. It’s called the Twisted Petal Flower because you make it by cutting out petals, twisting them and stitching them together.

You’ll need:
Fabric
Scissors
Thread and needle

I used a sheer fabric and I would recommend something thin (though sheer is not necessary). Since you’ll be twisting the fabric, both right and wrong sides will show, so you may want to keep that in mind when choosing your fabric. Also, depending on what kind of look you want, you may want to pick something that won’t fray too much since you’ll be leaving the edges raw.

Here we go!

First you’ll need to cut 2-3 fabric squares about the desired size of your finished flower (yes, there is only one here, but you will need 2 or 3. If you cut 3 squares you will have more petals. More on that later).

Take one square and fold it in half and then in half again, so it is in fourths. Making sure the folded tip is in the bottom left corner, draw and cut out a petal shape like so.

It should look like this when it is unfolded.

Next you will need to cut petals from the other squares. Start by cutting the squares in half so you have rectangles.

Fold the rectangle in half and cut it out in the shape of a petal again.

So you should have one 4 petal piece and two or four 2 petal pieces. In the flower I’m making here, I only ended up using 2 of the petals. But if you want a more full flower, you’ll use all four.

First you’ll want to thread up your needle and tie a knot at the end. Then take one of the 2-petal pieces and twist it in the center. You only need to twist it 180 degrees so that one side will be right side up and the other half will be wrong side up.

Do the same with another 2-petal piece and place it on top of the first one creating an X.

Place that X on top of the 4-petal piece at an angle so that all 8 petals are showing (no twisting necessary). The two twisted petal pieces go on top of the 4-petal piece.

Just to show how the petals should be place on each other, I’ve drawn Xs. The blue X is the 4-petal piece on the bottom. The pink X is the 2 twisted petals on top.

Starting from the back of the flower (ignore the picture), put your needle through the center of the flower and stitch it 2 or 3 times.

It will look like this, and you could very well be done . . .

but I wanted the flower to have even more dimension, so that all the petals would stick out from the dress. So, fold the whole flower in half (doesn’t matter which way) and stitch the center of the flower a few times (where my thumb is).

Open the flower and fold it in half the other way and repeat.

By pinching the bottom of the flower and stitching, you’ll get the whole thing to pucker up a little bit.

At this point, I decided I was done with this flower and just hand stitched it onto the dress with the remaining thread. If you want to add more petals, just repeat what you did with the first two petal pieces (twist them in the center and make an X), and stitch them on to the BACK of the flower making sure to place the petals at an angle where they’ll be seen best.

And that’s it! Like I said, you can easily stitch these onto clothes, or attach them to a pin, or a headband, a purse, etc.

Here are the flowers in action. Some I made just like this, some with more petals and some were just single petals stitched on.