Today is National Button Day! Wooooo! I was obsessed with buttons as a child. My mom had a tea tin full of them, and I would spend hours running my fingers through them, counting them, sorting them by size and shape. I know, my childhood was rough, right? When I found out that Friday was National Button Day! Wooooo! I knew I had to make a button-related project. Hang on to your bloomers when I reveal this shocking bit of news: This project is actually pretty normal. Pretty, even. I know, I’m scared too. It’s okay, we’ll get through this together.
Pretty right? Yeah. I’ve been sewing these things nonstop for 12 hours and I STILL think they’re pretty. I’m going to have to start needlefelting some intestines to get the weird back.
If you want to make some of these bad boys, gather the following …drumroll… MATERIALS!:
- Felt in either festive holiday colors (red, green, white, gold, etc.) or completely off the wall colors (I chose turquoise, orange, orangey yellow, and white)
- Sequins, beads, embroidery floss
- Jump rings (I made my own with 20-gauge orange wire)
- Small glass ball ornaments
- Thin wire, thread, or ribbon
- Buttons
The first thing you want to do is cut your felt into flower pieces using this awesome pattern (I am not at all biased as to the awesomeness of the pattern or anything, I swear), which can be downloaded by clicking on this cool word: Cacafogo
I sat here watching dumb youtube videos while cutting pieces. I cut several of each piece out of all of my colors (except white – it’s used as the base only). Once they were all cut and I had a pile of pretty pieces, I started stitching by attaching the large flower to my white felt.
I then embellished each petal with sequins and beads. You can also whip out your fanciest embroidery stitches here – make your flowers as prettily decadent as you like! Don’t worry, no one will tell if you’re secretly obsessed with the raised Hungarian braid. Your secret is safe with me. Embellish as crazy as you want. Pick two smaller flowers out of the pile and attach them to the larger flower. You can add fancy embroidery and beads, use your special scissors to funkify the edges of the circles, do it however you like. In my example, I opted for relatively simple and only attacked the edges of a circle with my pinking shears. Finish it off with a button in the middle.
Cut your white felt (or black felt or red felt… whichever color you’re using as a base) with about 1/8 inch border around the flower petals. Using this whole piece as a template, cut another piece of white to use as the back.
Sew a jump ring to the top and bottom to the inside of your back piece. Watch your stitches and make sure they’re tidy since they’ll show on the back! I made little cross stitches on some of mine and little fans like you see above on others. Once that is done, sew the front to the back.
To make a hanger, I used 24-gauge copper wire. You can alternatively use thin ribbon or yarn or skip this step all together and just use ornament hangers from the dollar store. It’s up to you! I felt like maybe my pieces needed a little more button action, so I used a piece of wire about 8-10 inches long, bent it into a loop and then fed it through the holes in a button.
I then put the ends of the wire through the top jump ring on my flower, made a loop and then wrapped the ends around the wire under the button. It’s sort of a fiddly job. As long as it all stays together, it’s all good.
And that’s it! Set up your super spangly lime green garland tree (shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiny), hang up a gaggle of ornaments, drink some very spiked eggnog, and it’s almost like the holidays.
1 Comment
marykay · November 16, 2012 at 11:50 pm
those are too cute.. gonna have to try those too
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