Fabric Blooms: 42 Flowers to Make, Wear & Adorn Your Life ($17.95 US; $19.95 Canada) by Megan Hunt is published by Lark Books and includes a huge assortment of simple craft projects where you use various types of fabric to constructor flowers. Use the flowers together in a vase as a home decor item, or turn them into accessories such as lapel pins and headbands. One point of this book that really appeals to me is the fact that you do not need a large amount of supplies to complete most of the project. Some projects might even be made using scraps and leftovers such as bits of fabric from a previous sewing project and orphaned buttons.

Most of the projects are designed around a similar process where you use templates (provided in the back of the book) to cut out petal and leaf shapes. Then you assemble these as explained in the instructions to form the flowers. The flowers are kept together using simple techniques such as using floral tape and basic hand-stitching like back and running stitches.

The book is filled with ideas on how to use the flowers once they are completed. For example, you can attach them to bobby pins and create pretty hair accessories. Turn them into push pins for a pretty and functional bulletin board. Attach a pin back and add them to a coat lapel. Make a bunch and give them out as small party favors or thank you gifts.

Because you will need a decent pair of sharp scissors to cut out the flower pieces, I wouldn’t say that these projects are necessarily good for very young children to try; however, for children who are a little older, these would be nice projects to do together. Novice crafters will also find these projects very doable. For more advanced crafters, like I said before, this could be a nice way to use up leftover supplies.