job week: Tuesday Tutorial: Handmade Silk Flower Hairpin

So the other night the ladies from my bible study small group got together and made these fabulous (faux) silk flowers. My sweet friend Rachel taught us how to make them and I told her I would definitely be doing a tutorial on my blog about these :) Thanks Rachel! :)

The fun thing is, you can make these as a hairpin, a pin to pin on your clothes, or you could even use elastic to create a headband (or purchase a ready-made headband!). Ooooh or what if you attached one to a Christmas gift as the bow? :)

Supplies:
+ Fake Silk (rayon? - the fake silky stuff you can buy in the fabric section at Wal-Mart for super cheap) - not much is needed, a ¼ yard would be waaaay more than enough to make a bunch of these flowers
**EDITED: satsumaart said...Nice tutorial! Yes, you definitely need to use rayon or some other synthetic fabric, and not real silk. Organic fibers (like silk) will char when you burn them, so you'd get a blackened edge instead of the cool melty effect that happens with synthetic fibers. :)** Thank you satsumaart! :)
+ small glass beads (or any other type of small bead to go in the center of the flower)
+ scissors
+ coordinating thread and needle
+ lighter (or open flame on a candle)
+ hairpin clip, pin backing or elastic, depending on which you prefer to make (I pictured all three options below)

Start by cutting out 5 circles from the fabric. They don't have to be perfect circles- I kind of make mine in oval-circle shapes. The diameter of the largest one on mine is about 2¾". Each circle should be a little smaller than the last, so as to have a tapered (flower petal) effect once we put it all together.

Now, using the lighter (or open flame) - be careful! - quickly run the edges through the flame so they will start to melt and curl up. Be super careful, the material can quickly catch on fire and quickly burn since the petals are small (Thanks to my hubby for doing this part so I could take the picture - you should have seen when I was trying to light the lighter, run the petal through it and take a picture ;) I'm sure it was quite entertaining).

It's ok if you burn the edges, just cut that tiny part off and try again.

Now you have five lovely and curly petals.

Take the larger two petals and sew the hairpin (or pin or elastic hairband) to them. Be sure to make several stitches so it will be nice and secure.

Take the top three petals and sew those all together, sewing the beads to the top at the same time.

Ok, the tricky part. I'm sure there is a simpler way to put this all together (let me know if you can think of one), but this is what we came up with ;) Beginning at the back of the flower (where the hairpin is sewn on) stick your needle through four petals and close to the center. Your stitches will be hidden by the top (fifth) petal. Stitch a couple times to reinforce. (The arrow below is pointing to the needle - see how it is under the top petal and that the stitch won't be noticeable?) *Note: We chose to sew the flower in two different parts and then all together so that the hairpin would be super secure and there wouldn't be a bazillion stitches all over the place under the top petal.