kojotutorial: plaid brooches

Before the holidays, a friend gave me a whole stash of beautiful Goodwill-bound clothes, including several long, plaid equestrian-ish skirts (in that same stash were the cashmere sweaters I’ve been making the pom pom hats out of… it was quite the treasure trove!).  I love plaid lately and the skirts offer ample fabric, so I set them aside for ‘something special.’

This weekend, I figured out what exactly that Something Special might be.  It’s a whole conglomeration of goodness- but this first installment is a simple plaid flower brooch.  I feel like you could use this same method with various fabrics (silk or satin, perhaps?) and also adapt the sizing for small brooches (or make them big and boisterous like I did.)  They don’t take much time, so there’s definitely room for some experimenting.  And when they turn out cute like this, why not, right?  Go crazy, friends!  And show us what you make!

Here are the basics.
You’ll need:
-some scraps of plaid fabric (I used a section of a plaid wool skirt). My strips were about 2″ x 18″, 2″ x 14″, and 2″ x 10″.
-a thick felted wool circle (a little bigger than a quarter) to use as a base
-a brooch pin
-a button
-a hot glue gun
-a sewing machine

1. Using pinking shears, cut along one edge of your three strips of fabric.  Along the other edge of your fabric, use the basting stitch option on your sewing machine and stitch along the entire length.  Leave a remnant of thread on each end (you’ll use this thread to pull and ruffle your fabric).

2. Pull on the thread remnant to bunch and ruffle your strips of fabric.

3. Take your longest strip of fabric (which now generally looks like a rosette because it’s been bunched) and glue it to your felt base using your hot glue gun.  Glue it into a round-ish, petal-ish shape.

4. Do the same with your medium and small lengths of fabric.  You should have a layered, flower-ish looking bunch of plaid.

5. Put a generous dollop of hot glue in the center of your brooch and set your button down into the glue.  Hold to secure.

6. Secure your brooch pin to the back of the felted wool ‘base’ with hot glue, lots of hot glue.

7. DONE!  I can’t wait to show you the matching ensemble!