Before Summer Ends: Fabric Flower Hair Accessories DIY

The weather’s HOT this August (even for San Francisco….sometimes) and I couldn’t help thinking that fall season is just around the corner. By bye pre-Fall catalogs, hello Fall 2012 catalogs and Back to School promotions. Too fast.

But at least I can celebrate summer one more time by posting one of the most classic, timeless DIY projects: fabric flower hair accessories. Plus, living in the San Francisco Bay Area (with its generally mild weather all-year long) gives us a great backdrop to wear these anytime.

It’s pretty easy to look for tutorials online, and with good reasons. They’re easy to make, versatile, and you can easily infuse your own personality into them by choice of fabrics, colors, techniques…the possibility is endless. My favorite go-to place for fabric flower is Craft Snob, and that site kept me busy for a while. If that’s enough to keep you busy experimenting, go to Tip Nut and you’ll have some more….distractions. But then again, these fabric flower hair accessories take relatively short time to make and the reward is instantaneous, so why not make some?

Below are my various DIY incarnations of fabric flower hair accessories:

The first ones I did were the quickest. First, disassemble leftover silk flowers decoration. Second, glue about 5 – 7 petals together from big to small. Then, glue the button at the center at the front. Lastly, glue the hair clip (I like the alligator kinds I got from Etsy.com) at the back. That’s it! So I made at least three of them :)

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After that, I started experimenting with bigger flower diameter, plus adding some more “cushion” at the back of the flower petals. A quick read of a popular Japanese magazine at Kinokuniya, Japantown gives me the idea of using white lace and tulle. So this time, I addition to gluing the petals, I stitched a small piece of white lace by gathering one side to a circle. I also cut squares of white tulle fabric. The rest of the assembling (from back to front: tulle – lace – petals – button) was done by stitching, but you can definitely skip it altogether and use glue instead. Lastly, glue the hair pin at the back and…Voila!

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And shortly after that, I ended of making one with all tulle for petals:

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For the last iteration, I made what I ended up calling as Evelyn headband. It’s basically following the same steps as what Craft Snob has here (with felt fabric), but I was using cotton fabric. This one took longer to do because of all the cutting and stitching, plus the making of the elastic headband. However, the result is so cute and so versatile. See how Stuff & Bits use different kinds of fabric for this project; all of them have their own mood! I gave this one to my friend (guess what her name is? Evelyn.) and I should make another one soon :)

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So what are you waiting for? Are you a fabric flower DIY fan?
Musank

P.S.: Next time, I’ll share my feather hair accessories DIY projects. Stay tuned!