DIY Fabric Leaves

I recently had to make 50 or 60 of these for a wedding we designed.  I thought it would be fun to post some photos and how to's of the project, as these leaves can be a really neat accent decoration around the house, for a party or, as we used them, for a wedding.

I used three to four layers of coordinating fabric per leaf.  The first thing I did is cut them all out!  I drew a simple leaf shape pattern and cut multiple layers of the same fabric, that way they weren't all perfect.

After cutting the leaves out, I used brown thread and my free style quilting foot on my machine.  I think you could get the same effect if you disabled your feed dog and used a regular sewing foot, but I haven't tried this.

I just free style sewed leaf veins up and around each leaf.

I chain sewed them to save time, but when I finished them all I thought that would also make a fun garland, all the leaves strung together.

Sewn leaves draped as a garland before cutting.

 

close up of the sewn leaves

After sewing the leaf veins in all the leaves I cut them apart!

After cutting them apart, I took some small gauge floral wire and cut it into about 8" long pieces.  I inserted wire in the bottom end of each leaf and folded it over and twisted it together.  After twisting the wire loosely together I wrapped each wire in brown floral tape.  You could obviously use green depending on where you were using the leaves and what color scheme you had in mind.

That is pretty much it.  We wrapped the wire stems around tree branches
to give the feel of a few fall leaves remaining on the trees.  I also used them for all the boutineer and corsage bases.  With the red flowers they were very striking.

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