Fun Puffy Flowers

Make a fun flower for mom this Mother's day. Follow this cute tutorial to make the perfect gift. She can decorate the house with these flowers. They're great conversation pieces.

Materials:

• Fabric
• Template/shape to trace around (or freehand cuts the mustard too)
• Pen
• 3/16 Dowel
• Fiberfill
• Scissors/pinking shears

Note:Jo-Ann's has a large selection of dowels, but any hardware store should as well. You can see the diameter and length of the ones I bought. For the vases I had, it worked perfectly to just saw them in half, but you'll be able to gauge what height will look best in your creation.

Steps:

1. Trace around your template/shape. I added an extra inch all the way around just by eyeballing it.
    
2. Cut out 2 shapes for each flower (front and back). I used a pinking shears to give it a little more character.
    
3. Place 2 pieces, wrong sides together and simply sew around the petals leaving about a 1/4" seam. I used a sewing machine, but you could certainly do a running stitch by hand. Leave a 1" hole in between 2 petals for stuffing.
    
4. Push fiberfill into each formed flower, using the dowel to distribute it into each petal.
    
5. Saw dowel to desired length and place it far enough in to establish stability.
    
6. You can hand sew this open part closed, but I actually didn't. The type and print of fabric I used was very forgiving.