Easy-Peasy Ribbon Flowers - tutorial

It has been a pretty crazy and busy week for me. I have actually gotten a lot done in my scrapping area (no layouts but lots of organizing!) and I hope to share with you all what I've been up to soon! But for now, I am going to share with you how to make some easy-peasy ribbon flowers. I took these photos last week while making a flower for a layout and I'm finally able to show you how to make them. They are super cute and I hope you enjoy learning how to make them! I've made them from several different types and sizes of ribbon and they have always turned out super cute. So far, I've used them on my "Silly" layout and my "Thanks from the Heart" card.

So here we go!!!!

The first thing you need to do is pick out your ribbon and cut it. I honestly haven't been measuring them as I make them. I've just kind of been cutting the ribbon to the size that "felt" right. I know that doesn't help you much, but I'll try to explain. lol The thicker the ribbon, bigger the flower will be so you can cut the ribbon longer. Thin ribbon will make a small flower, so you need to cut it a lot smaller, like 2 inches or so. I used a 1-inch thick, organdy-type ribbon above. It's a thin material, so I knew it would gather tighter and make a nice, frilly flower so I cut the ribbon around 5 inches long. You just need to play with it and see how it's going to work, if you're not sure. You can even stitch and gather it (without cutting the ribbon) to see how it's going to look first.
With a nice, sharp needle and matching thread, run a straight sewing stitch all the way across one edge of the ribbon. For my thread, I cut a nice long piece of thread, run one end through the needle, fold the thread in half, and tie the knot about 4 inches from the end. You want the thread double, so it's strong enough to handle your pulling on it later and a long tail at the end of the knot. That way you will have extra thread to hold on to and help gather the ribbon. When you're done sewing, it will look like this:
Now pick up your ribbon and start pushing the ribbon in on both sides until you can bring the two ends together and tie once. Don't tie it in a complete knot yet! Pull the ends of the thread tightly until the ribbon has gathered together tightly in the center and has made a flower. Now you can tie the thread into a knot....or two, or three. lol I usually make a few knots, just in case. lol In the picture below, this is what it looks like after I tied my first "knot" and before I pulled the two threads to tighten the ribbon into a flower. Once you pull the two threads, the center will close of your flower. If your ribbon is thick, it won't close as tightly.
Now take a good look at your flower. See if you can tell where the two ends of the ribbon are. Sometimes the ribbon folds over it's self and hides the ends and looks just fine. Other times, you can easily tell where the ends of the ribbon are and I think it looks a lot better if you can't see the ends. lol So, with this thin ribbon, I was able to just add some Mono-Adhesive to the ends, just a bit, and then pinch the ends together to seal it up. It works great on thin, organdy ribbons. For thick ribbon, I use the same thread that I gathered the ribbon up with and run a straight-stitch down the ribbon and back up to the center to sew those two ends together. I had to do this for the flowers on my "Thanks from the Heart" card, even on those little flowers. Now you can cut off those two threads. Here's a finished ribbon flower!
Now here's the fun part where you can really play! You can add whatever you want to your little flower or leave it like it is. Here are some examples as I was trying to decide what to add to my flower for my "Silly" layout (I ended up picking the button one! lol) :
You could even add another ribbon flower that's smaller....that would look cute, too!

I hope this made sense. This is really the first tutorial that I've done and I tend to get a little wordy. lol If you have any questions, please ask and I'll help as much as I can! I have some other fun, flower ideas to share with you soon! I'd also love to see any projects that you do using these easy-peasy flowers, so please share here!

Take care everyone and I hope you all have a wonderful day!