Felt Sunflowers Tutorial

Sometimes I find that I can't turn off my brain.  Has that ever happened to you?  I bought a table cloth a couple of weeks ago and then got an idea in my head.  So I just had to make something and so here we have felt sunflowers - and a tutorial for you to make your own.

What you will need:
Lightweight Cardboard - cereal boxes, cracker boxes and tissue boxes are perfect
Felt - in appropriate sunflower colors  orange/yellow/brown

Glue - I used a glue gun - faster that way, but I'm sure other glues would work, too.

First you need to cut out some circles.
From the cardboard: Cut out a 2" circle
From the background felt one 2" circle, one 3" circle
From the dark brown felt one 1.5" circle
(for circles in my house, I just find a glass that is closest to the size I want and trace around it)

 Glue the 2" cardboard circle to the center of the 3" felt circle.

 Run some glue around the edge and fold the felt over to the back.

 Another ring of glue

 And cover with your 2" piece of felt.

 You now have a sturdy base to build your flower on.

 Now you need to cut out some petals.  This goes faster if you cut two layers at a time.  (I might be stating the obvious here, but it took me a couple of flowers)

 Mine are approximately 2" long and 3/4" wide.   You will need between 14 and 20 petals per flower.  This depends on how wide you cut them and how much you overlap when gluing. Don't worry about being perfect.  In nature there is a lot of symmetry, but rarely perfection.  When all the petals are glued on, you can always trim them up if one looks weird.

 Start gluing the petals on to the base.

Glue them all the way around once and then start on the second layer.

I try to offset the second later - get the petal points between the first layer of petal points.

Once your second layer is down, glue on the dark brown 1.5" dark brown circle.

And you've got yourself a felt sunflower.  In gold:

Or orange

Or yellow

Or....
Well, you'll have to come back next week to see what else you can do with this pattern.

Come back tomorrow for a Totally Turkey Tutorial!  Just in time for Thanksgiving.