The lovely Ruth Singer has provided an exclusive tutorial for visitors to The Natural Wedding Company blog – a ‘how to’ guide to making one of her beautiful Camelia flower corsages.

Ruth will guide you through how to create your own corsages perfect for brides or bridesmaids using fabric remnants – perhaps even left over material from making your own wedding dress!  These flowers are really simple to make and work well with heavy weight satin and silk dress fabrics.

Before you start, download your petal templates and print them out.

Start by cutting out 7 large petals and 5 small ones – make sure you iron the fabric before you start.  There’s no need to draw round the template, simply pin it to a scrap of fabric, cut around it roughly then trim to size following the template {1, 2 + 3}.

Make the petal shaping – thread a small needle {4} and knot the ends together creating a strong double thread.

Starting at one straight edge of the petal, stitch in and out across the straight edge {5}.

Pull up the thread and fasten with two stitches on the underside, in the folds {6 + 7}.

Repeat for all petals {8}.

Draw twice around a pot about 4-5cm wide onto the scrap of felt to make two circles {9}.

Cut them out {10}.

Take one felt circle and using a double thread as before, sew the first large petal on to the edge of the felt, as shown {11}.  Don’t put it too near the centre, or too near the edge, but somewhere between.

Stitch up and down through the felt so you down pucker the felt.

Repeat with all the other large petals, overlapping them slightly.  Then sew the small petals into the centre of the felt circle, again overlapping slightly {12}.

Sew the button into the centre of the flower, making sure it covers all the stitching {13}.

Take the second felt circle.  Sew the safety pin onto the centre of the circle, stitching as shown {14}.  Make sure you don’t sew the open side of the pin!  Fasten the thread firmly on the reverse side.

Place the pin side of the felt to cover the stitched felt base of the flower.  Sew around the edge, joining the two circles together, keeping the stitches nice and neat {15}.

And there you have it – your finished Camelia corsage!

Have you created your own Camellia flower corsage using Ruth’s tutorial?  If so, send us a picture of your finished corsage and we’ll post some on the blog.

And if you don’t rate your sewing skills but would love to incorporate these flower corsages into your wedding day, head over to Ruth’s website and buy one ready made!

If you’d like to create more of Ruth Singer’s beautiful projects she’s written a fab book called ‘Sew It Up’ which is available from her website or Amazon.