How to: Make fabric flowers

For this flower I've used 7 circles, but feel free to work in other triangular numbers. 5, 7 and 9 work very well, though I'd stick to 5 if the fabric you'll use is thick.

I've doubled up the thread to make sure it doesn't snap when I pull the stitches together

Fold into a quarter

Do a few running stitches, making sure the needle ends coming up through the fabric  rather than down so your petal will have a nice shape to it.

Like this

After threading a few 'petals' on you should have something that looks like this, don't worry if they aren't all facing the same way, this can be sorted out later.

Pushing against the double knot, gather the fabric till it the petals are tight against one another

To bring your flower together, run a few stitches into the first petal and pull together

Secure the first and last petals with a few stitches higher up the petal and then tie off the thread.

To make the middle, you can either attach a button, or using a circle of fabric, more running stitches and some wadding, you can make something like the above flower

This is the horribly untidy back of the flower, after a bit more practice they will hopefully look a lot neater!