DIY on Mother's Day: zero waste flowers for mum

For everyone with (young) children, Mother's Day is a special day, but companies also make good use of it to sell their fun, useful, special and beautiful products to all those sweet mothers who deserve to be in the limelight. Can there be any other way? Absolutely! Our DIY expert Melanie has an idea: make a bunch of flowers out of leftover fabrics. These zero waste flowers are a great gift for mum and the planet.

Ultimate Mother's Day gift: zero waste flowers with no environmental damage

The most common gift given on Mother's Day is flowers. And I don't blame anyone in that. Flowers make you happy, add colour to your living room and put a smile on everyone's face. It is almost impossible to imagine the huge environmental damage behind that lovely fragrance. Flowers may seem like a sustainable product from nature, but they are anything but. Many flowers come from abroad and arrive here by plane or truck. And the flowers that come from here often grow in a heated greenhouse, which in turn involves a lot of CO2 emissions and often pesticides. Want to know more about this? Earlier we wrote a article on the impact of flowers and how to choose it more sustainably. And so I set to work on a better little flower, namely a bunch made from an old pair of jeans that can also last for years. How zero waste do you want it to be?

A craft project perfect for Mother's Day: making a bunch of flowers out of old jeans.

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DIY: craft a zero waste bunch of flowers

On Mother's Day, go for a sustainable and meaningful gift: make your own zero waste flowers from leftovers. These will last a lifetime and are a lot less polluting than real flowers. And say it yourself: this is just so much more original too, isn't it? This will score points!

Prepare10 minutes mins

Making30 minutes mins

Total Time40 minutes mins

Keyword: zero waste, diy, crafts, leftover materials, flowers, jeans, Mother's Day

Tools

• fabric scraps(For example, from the thrift store or from old textiles or old clothes you still have lying around).
• scissors
• glue (gun)
• white glue(I used fabric glue, but wood glue or white hobby glue also works fine.)
• leftover green wool or cotton(Check out the thrift store!)
• skewers(I still had them in the drawer, of course you can also just use twigs or sturdy iron wire works very well too).

Instructions

• Cut strips from the leftover fabric. I cut strips of about 30 x 5 to 8 cm. It doesn't have to be very precise. For larger flowers, use larger strips.
• Fold the strip in half with the long ends together and glue in place with the glue gun.
• On one side, fold the short side towards the long side to create a kind of triangle and glue it in place with the glue gun.
• Place your skewer on the triangle, put some glue from the glue gun on the bottom and roll the corner around the skewer, so to speak. This is the heart of your rose.
• Then fold and glue the rest of the strip around the heart, doing this piece by piece so that you can use your fingers to shape the rose (careful with your fingers and the hot glue! I ended up with a burn!)
• At the end of the strip, glue another triangle inwards and glue it in place.
• To finish the bottom nicely, cut out a round from the fabric that you give some snips around. Make a small hole in the middle with the scissors.
• Slide the round around the skewer. Put a generous dab of glue from the glue gun on the bottom of the rose and fold the round against it. Now the underside is nicely finished.
• Then you can finish off the skewer nicely by twisting the green wool around it. To do this, spread a piece at a time with the white craft glue and wind the wool tightly around it.
• If necessary, cut some leaves from the fabric and stick them around the stem by putting a drop of glue on the tip of the leaf and sticking it around the stem, so to speak.

Notes

- If you want even more shape in the rose, you can occasionally turn the strip a turn in step 4 before folding and gluing it further again.

- Also use the frayed edges or the selvedge of the fabric. You won't then need to fold your strip in half (you will skip step 2).

- I used jeans, but of course you can also make it a very colourful bouquet by using coloured fabrics.

- You can use any kind of fabric, including stretch fabric, think of leftover lace or tulle. You can often find fabric at a thrift store. Also check whether they have any textiles they are getting rid of. Clothing with tears or stains can no longer be sold, but are still suitable for making these flowers, for example. An appeal on the local give-away corner can also probably bring you some cheerful fabric scraps!

- You can also make a pretty wreath with the flowers. I wrapped a broken embroidery hoop with strips of jeans and glued the flowers in place. Step 7-10 dropped. However, I still cut leaves which I glued in between.

Got the hang of it? I made with the help of Daphne's book from The Felt Florist also very beautiful zero waste flowers from wool felt.

More sustainable tips from thegreenlist.nl

• Still looking for an original homemade gift? How about these pretty hearts?
• Planning to give mums a bottle of wine as a gift this year? There's a lot to that too, but fortunately you can also choose that more sustainably.
• Do you like to wrap your gift sustainably? Then be sure to check out these zero waste packing tips.
• Always nice: a sweet card to go with it. Check out our DIY to make your own cards here.
  
  

Photo credits: Melanie de Oliveira.