5 Little Monsters: Felt Flowers with the Cricut Maker

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A little over a month ago I had the awesome opportunity to attend the Cricut Mountain Make-a-Thon, held here in Salt Lake, where they unveiled the new Cricut Maker. That week we attended classes where we were shown the new machine and the things that it could do as well as having the opportunity to try it out and make some projects of our own. I was really excited to see the new blades, the rotary blade and the knife blade (the knife blade will not be available for another month or so). The tiny little rotary blade cut through fabric so smoothly and perfectly. I immediately started thinking about all of the things I could cut more easily with that little blade. A couple of weeks ago a new Maker showed up on my doorstep and I couldn't wait to use it.

I haven't had as much time to play around with my new machine as I would like but I was so excited to try cutting fabric with it that pretty much immediately I cut out a whole quilt top. I haven't had a chance to finish sewing it all together yet but I will post about it as soon as I get it finished. I think it is going to turn out really cute. One of the things I was really excited to with the rotary blade was cutting felt. I tried cutting felt one time with my explore and it was a disaster. I guess with the explore machines and the normal blades you are supposed to only cut bonded felt. Sometimes that is fine and works for your project, but sometimes you don't want any kind of interfacing or anything on it.

I decided to try some felt flowers to test it out. I figured they would be a great way to see how well the maker could cut felt. Not only is this a project that you would not want anything on the back of the felt, but it also has some pretty small details with the leaves and the petals and I was curious to see how well they would cut. I just used cheap felt, like 25¢ sheets you can get at any craft store. I was really quite impressed with how well it cut. It cut all of the details but nothing cut through. Everything stuck well enough to the mat (I used a pink fabric mat) that it stayed in place but came off easily without pulling or stretching the small pieces of felt. It did leave some fussiness on the mat and I'm hoping that doesn't affect how well my mat works next time I use it, but other than that it was really great. I forsee lots of felt flowers in my future.

I wanted to try to make a headband for my girls but they would make really cute hairclips as well. There are a ton of different ways you could use felt flowers and they were really easy to make and cut great with the Maker and the rotary blade.

How to Make Felt Flowers with the Cricut Maker

You will need:

Cricut Maker
Rotary Blade (this comes with the Maker)
Pink Fabric Mat
Cricut Design Space (this file that I used or make your own using images available in Design Space)
felt sheets in desired colors
hot glue or fabric glue
optional: headband, hairclip, etc.

Instructions:

The first thing you will need to do is choose the flowers you want to use. The link above will take you to my project but there are lots of different flowers to choose from. In design space click on images and search for either 3D Flowers, Rolled Flowers, or Felt Flowers and you will find some options. Most of them will be a spiral shape that you roll up and glue. If you find one you like try clicking on the little i in the corner and it will bring up the info including the cartridge that belongs to, you can click on that name and it will bring up all of the designs in that group or cartridge.

Once you have your design chosen and sized the way you want you are ready to cut. When you put your felt on the mat be sure to press it down well so that it is smooth and stuck. Cut your felt sheets.

Carefully pull the flowers and leaves off the mat.

Roll the flowers from the outside so that the bottom edge is even, gluing along the bottom edge as you roll. When you get to the end there is a circle piece, glue that piece to the bottom of your flower.