It’s official, I’ve become addicted to making 3D rag rug flowers. Ever since I came up with the pattern to make my first rag rug bouquet, I’ve been on an absolute spree. The thing is, I find it therapeutic (which can’t always be said about some of my larger rugs). It’s a quick and fun project where you can make 7 flowers (a whole bouquet) in just one evening!
This project is great for rag rug beginners and experts alike and is ideal for using up little offcuts of pretty fabrics that you’ve been saving (but even less pretty fabrics look good too). We made all of the flowers below using the shaggy technique of rag rugging using either a Rag Rug Spring Tool or latch hook, but you could even play around and incorporate some loopy rag rugging into your flowers.
As I’ve been on a bit of a roll, I thought I would put together a blog post to share some of the rag rug flowers I’ve made so you can take inspiration if you do decide to make a rag rug bouquet for yourself (you can buy a Rag Rug Bouquet Kit or hemmed hessian pack over on the Ragged Life Website).
If you make any rag rug flowers, please send any photos over to hello@raggedlife.com for me to share below – it’s always great to see what people make and I’m sure other crafters would love to hear your tips.
So, here are some of my individual rag rug flowers and how they work in a rag rug bouquet – I hope you find it inspiring and colourful 🙂
Ragged Life Rag Rug Bouquets:
The Original Bouquet:
This is the first rag rug bouquet I ever made so it will hold a very special place in my heart. It taught me some very valuable lessons about what fabrics work best. You can read my tips below 🙂
This was our first ever rag rug bouquet. We were particularly pleased with how the rag rug hydrangea (front centre) worked out as it looked so realistic.
We had a whole load of fun choosing what fabrics to use for the flowers but we landed on chiffon for the pink and white flower, silk for the hydrangea, velvet for the deep purple flower, t-shirt (with elastic in) for the light pink flower and cotton for the large pink floral flower.
Here you can see the different textures a bit better. We particularly like how the light pink t-shirt material creates petals that form into tubes and the velvet makes things look richer and more opulent.
Chiffon flowers fold to create geometric shapes within the petals – these add a certain sophistication to any rag rug bouquet.
This is how our rag rug hydrangea looked up close.
And here’s a top down view so you can see how the different the textures work together. Since taking this photo, I’ve trimmed the pink bottom flower down slightly to make it a bit more rounded.
Spring Bouquet:
My next bouquet was made as a spring bunch of rag rug flowers. You wouldn’t believe it from the snow on the ground, but these were finished in March! I used mostly pastel colours and even a bit of lairy black and white leopard print fleece. This is a good example of how adding a bit of interesting greenery to a composition makes it look so realistic and pretty. All the flowers in this bouquet were done in the simple shaggy technique of rag rugging then trimmed to make them into cute “poms”.
I wanted to put together a spring bouquet of rag rug flowers and then it started snowing!!! Oh well, it made for some nice photos 🙂
Here’s a bit of a closer look at some of the rag rug flowers. It’s nice to use textured fabrics for the flowers as they add life to the bouquet.
Don’t they look pretty against the snowy ground…
The rag rug flowers look great from any angle as they’re 3D!
The Experimental Bouquet:
Even though I’d consider myself fairly good at rag rugging, even I sometimes don’t know how certain fabrics are going to look. This bouquet wasn’t really planned, but came about after lots of experimentation with different materials. I particularly like how the netted fabric works in the lilac flower.
Here I was experimenting with what happened when I mixed fresh flowers with the rag rug ones. You can barely even notice that they’re different 🙂
This was a particularly bright bouquet of rag rug flowers!
Adding netting to your flowers adds gorgeous texture.
Tropical Bouquet:
This tropical bouquet was one of the first bouquets where I actually decided to plan the precise colours and materials that went into it. I kind of winged it with the bouquets before… This bouquet is particularly unique as it’s the first time I shaped the petals to go into the flowers, rather than just doing the simple shaggy technique for each flower. I hope you like the unique look.
Our latest Tropical Bouquet of rag rug flowers.
Here you can see the shaped petals of the spikey flower at the top and the blousey flower at the front…
This particular bouquet would fit in very well at a wedding 🙂
One of my favourite rag rug flowers in this bouquet is the grey flower in the bottom right of the bouquet. It was made using Hoooked’s jute yarn, which gives great texture.
As with the other bouquets, real greenery makes the flowers look more real.
And this was the original bouquet that inspired this project. As you can see, it’s not a literal translation, but it gave a good colour palette and starting point..
Winter Bouquet:
In complete contrast to the bright, tropical vibes of the rag rug bouquet above, I really wanted this one to feel cosy, lush and opulent. Velvet is a great material for getting this feel, as well as any materials with a bit of shine… lining fabrics, for example.
Our Winter Bouquet features lots of the colours found around Christmas time… red, green and white.
It was so much fun playing with the different materials and colours in this bouquet. I love how vibrant the reds look.
This is one of my favourite flowers in this bouquet. It was just a simple blouse with a large floral pattern on.
I even liked this bouquet without the greenery
But I do think that the fresh fern leaves freshen up the look of the flowers.
One of my favourite flowers in this bouquet is the white and green spikey flower on the right in this photo. This one has shaped petals.
Student’s Rag Rug Bouquets:
Below are some of the rag rug bouquets that you’ve made using our Rag Rug Bouquet Kits or hemmed hessian packs. I love seeing your creations, so if you do decide to make some flowers, please do send me work in progress or finished photos through 🙂 You can send them to elspeth@raggedlife.com
Ali’s bouquet of pastel rag rug flowers looks lovely in this vintage coffee pot.
Here you can see the variety of colours in the bouquet up close.
Monica’s bouquet of flowers look so realistic with the eucalyptus!
Anne did a full day workshop with me where she started this cute rag rug bouquet. I love the mix of patterned and plain fabrics.
Caroline made a lovely rag rug bouquet to sit in pride of place in the centre of her dining room table.
Caroline even took a photo of how the flowers looked before she assembled them which was useful.
Michelle’s beautiful rag rug bouquet in reds, greens and creams… gorgeous!
Ali has been absolutely killing it with the rag rugging recently – check out these gorgeous fabric sunflowers 🙂
My friend Eddy made this gorgeous bouquet for his brother and sister-in-law on their wedding day… sooo cute!
I love how Carol has put fern leaves in with her flowers to make them look more natural.
Karolyn’s sunflowers look an absolute treat. The live foliage really brings them to life too!
Wendy made this lovely bouquet of hydrangeas that blend in perfectly with her garden.
Christina’s pink flowers certainly looked cute.
Nichola’s beautiful bouquet made from her little ones babygrows makes a stunning and timeless centre piece for her kitchen table.
Well that’s all I have by way of flowers for the time being but we’ll be updating this blog post as we make more so stay tuned for more flowers 🙂
If you’d like to be the first to see our new creations, why not join our Rag Rug Community on Facebook for advice, resources and gorgeous rag rug photos: https://www.facebook.com/groups/RagRugCommunity/
Or connect with us on social media at:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raggedlife/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/raggedliferagrugs/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/raggedlife/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/raggedlife
We’ve got lots of beautiful rag rug designs for you to take inspiration from on our social media channels.
Happy rag rugging everyone!
Elspeth x
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