DIY Wedding Flower Corsage

My next wedding project has been to make a flower corsage for the mothers and grandmothers and for the pianist and soloist. Fortunately, I didn't need to worry about the men's flowers because I found an Etsy seller who makes velvet flowers that are really lovely and were perfect for the wedding.

I decided I would use tulle, chiffon and satin to create flowers by burning the pieces of fabric. There are tons of tutorials for these flowers on blogs - just search Google for "burned flowers".

The first step in my process was to cut the circles in different sizes according to how I wanted to layer the flower. Since the colors are red and yellow, most of my layers were those two colors. However, I also added in some cream lace and an off white chiffon layer. After experimenting, I learned that the more layers you have in the flower, the better it looks. My circles went from biggest at the bottom to smallest at the top. The tulle circle on top is larger because tulle burns down really fast and it needed to be larger so I had something left after burning.

Then, I started burning each piece of fabric using a candle. The bigger the candle and flame, the less close you need to be to get your fabric to melt and burn. In fact, when I was using a large candle, I could hold my fabric four inches away from the flame and it would still melt. I needed to be that distance to keep from making holes in the fabric. However with each piece, I first went around the edge of the circle to burn it and keep it from fraying. This I did by holding the edge of my fabric right up by the flame. As with everything, it took some practice before I was able to get my pieces exactly like I wanted them. But once I got the hang of it, the burning and melting went pretty quickly. Just be sure you use synthetic fabrics. You want fabrics that will melt and not catch on fire. The only two fabrics I had a problem with were tulle - once in awhile it would catch on fire - and the lace I used. It had parts in it that would melt but other parts just wanted to burn so I had to be careful with it. With the tulle, I just cut off the pieces on the edge that were jagged or had burned too much.

Once I had all my layers finished, I sewed a vintage rhinestone button in the middle. This really gives the corsage lots of sparkle and ties in with the jewelry in the bridal bouquet and cake topper. The flowers with the larger rhinestone buttons will be for the mothers and grandmothers.

My next step was to take pieces of felt and hot glue them on the back of each flower. I tried a fabric glue but it didn't work. Although I don't like hot glue, it really did a great job in this instance.

Then, I hot glued a pin to each flower.

And finally, I hot glued another piece of felt over the pin to finish it off.

The flower corsages will look really nice with the men's red velvet boutonnieres. I am going to add something extra to the groom's boutonniere. I'll show that later.