Create a Scrap Busting Felt Mini Quilt Inspired by Retro 1970’s Floral Wallpaper, Only Now in 3-D

I’ve been on a personal quest to find unique ways to make the most of those tiny bits of leftover felt from other craft projects. I have a lot particularly of shades of brown I wondered what project could shrink my pile, and in a nice way. I got inspired by those awesome 1960’s and 1970’s floral kitchen wallpaper patterns and wondered what it would be like to make my own in felt and make it 3 dimensional so it is fun to touch as well as look at.

This mini quilt pattern is the result. It used oodles of tiny brown bits of felt, plus odd colours of embroidery thread and the whole project is completely hand sewn so no sewing machine required. Because the whole quilt measures 22.4cm * 27.4cm it is actually quite a fast project to make up and I used some modern quilt tools to speed up the whole process.

I really love this project and I think I will be experimenting with this design more.

To make this project, I collected all my tiny bits of felt from old projects in lots of shades of brown, yellow and beige. I needed to iron quite a few of them so they were easy to work with. Exercise care with iron temperature if you are using synthetic felt scraps.

Materials needed:

• 2 A4 sheets of felt (for the base and back of the quilt). Mine were camel and light brown. One should be light enough colour so that marks in the fabric marking pen show up clearly.
• Lots of little scraps of brown, beige, and muted yellow felt. You can really get rid of tiny pieces less than 3cm square!
• Packet of 1cm diameter pre-cut felt circles in shades of brown, beige, yellow and if not enough even white and grey work well. The pre-made circles are optional, but save you cutting 20 small circles.
• Piece of light weight iron on interfacing about 22cm * 27cm
• Embroidery threads in shades to complement but not match the felt colours. I used 6 colours in total: DMC 414, 3370, 921, 3822, 612 & 829. Choose you own from your hoard.
• Fabric glue stick. I love this product!
• 2B pencil
• Auto disappearing fabric marking pen
• Fabric chalk marking pencil
• Embroidery needle
• Embroidery scissors
• Older scissors to cut out the felt
• Metal ruler
• Quilters ruler
• Rotary cutter
• Embroidery thread conditioner (optional, but always nice)
• Iron and ironing board
• Pins
• Scrap of cardboard (from a cereal box or similar) measuring about 8 - 10cm square

Embroidery stitches used:

• Blanket stitch
• Backstitch

All embroidery is worked in 2 strands of embroidery thread.

Use an A4 sheet of felt in the lightest of your brown sheets, or if you are like me cut a section of felt for the base measuring about 23cm * 28cm (so you can trim back later)

Using the piece of light weight iron on interfacing and your iron, press the interfacing to the rear of your felt sheet and set aside.

Download the pattern sheets. One is a nice guide for layout (you’re welcome!) and the other has the templates for the felt rectangles that are blanket stitched to the base fabric, the petal template and a handy template for marking the backstitch shapes on the base fabric.

Transfer the petal template and the backstitch marking guide template to cardboard (like an old cereal box) and cut out. Why? Because later you will need to cut out 100!!! petals for this project and also draw around the guide 20 times. It’s worth the effort now.

The fabric base will be covered in a 20cm * 25cm checker board grid with 20 rectangles of felt each measuring 2.5cm * 5cm. I used whatever colours I had that were large enough and used a quilters ruler, metal ruler and rotary cutter to cut the 20 rectangles. This was the easiest way. You can also use the guide from the template sheet.

Lay the rectangles out progressively on the template guide to experiment with your layout as you cut.

Once you have collected 20 rectangles, it’s time to glue them to the felt base layer using fabric glue stick. I found the best way to get the rectangles in place was to draw a grid measuring 20cm * 25cm on the surface in fabric marking pen (the sort that auto disappears), and then use my template layout guide to transfer rectangles to the marked grid. I dabbed a bit of fabric glue stick onto the back of each rectangle (you don’t need to completely cover in glue). They are laid out checker board style with each row starting from the opposite side of the square. Hey, this instruction probably makes no sense, so just look at the pictures.

The fabric glue stick takes a little while to dry, so pin all the rectangles down to secure and then walk off for half an hour (tea break time!). After the glue has dried, remove the pins so it’s easier to do the stitchery.

Using 2 strands of embroidery thread work blanket stitch around each of the edges of the felt rectangles. I had no pattern with this. I just used six different colours because I found six colours I liked.

Once all the rectangles have been blanket stitched securely in place, use the 4cm square cardboard marking template you prepared earlier and the disappearing fabric marking pen to mark a smaller rectangle beside each large felt rectangle.

Using 2 strands of embroidery thread, backstitch along each line. Again I had no pattern. I just tried to not have the same colours beside each other.

Note, I wish I had paid more attention when I was working, because I did a couple of backstitch rectangles on the wrong side of the square. It’s worthwhile following the template!

You now should have the base layer completed.

Time to cut those petals!

Using your petal template and a mix of 2B pencil and chalk pencil, draw and cut out 100!!!! individual petals from all your tiny felt scraps. This feels like a lot. It is a lot!!! But how good is it to use up the little scrappy bits. Check out my photo of the off-cuts pile.

I had no plan here other than to collect 20 piles of 5 petals with each of the petals in each pile being a different brown, beige, yellow colour. That way each flower is made of five different petal colours plus a centre. It’s worth piling the petals as you go on a sheet of paper so you can see how many petals you have cut out.

Once you have cut out all 100 petals, arrange them in groups of five petals onto the 20 felt squares and dab them in place with a bit of glue stick. Take your 20 felt circles in the brown shades (or white or grey, which is what I had) and dab one into the centre of each flower with a spot of glue stick. Be sure that the circle covers all of the petal bases.

Pin all 20 flowers down and then go grab another tea or coffee while the glue dries.

Remove all your pins.

Using 2 strands of embroidery thread catch each of the petals down with 2 long stitches radiating out from the centre. I alternated two colours of thread for this step (3822 and 829) and worked all 5 petals with 10 stitches at once in a wagon wheel type stitch shape.

Using 2 strands of embroidery thread, blanket stitch around each flower centre circle. Again I alternated colours for each centre. I used 921 and 612.

After all the stitching is complete, trim the base felt layer to a rectangle measuring 22cm * 27cm. Using a quilters ruler and rotary cutter for this gives a nice finish.

Trim the backing felt layer to measure 27.4cm * 22.4cm (so 4mm bigger than the base layer) again using the rotary cutter.

Position the top layer onto the base layer so that all sides have a 2mm margin of edge.

Use fabric glue stick to dab the top layer to the base layer. Pin to secure.

Using 2 strands of embroidery thread neatly work an outline 5mm in from the inner edge all the way around the mini quilt. You may like to mark this line using the disappearing fabric marking pen and ruler.

Now sit back and check out all those lovely flowers!