How to Make a Crochet Flower Bouquet

Wow, it has been a long time since my last post! I have been so busy this summer writing my dissertation and planning my wedding!! that my Etsy shop and blog have been running on autopilot.

Yes, that's right: I said planning my wedding!

My boyfriend and I got engaged on May 4, and we have been busily planning the wedding since we wanted to get married in the fall so that my parents could attend here in Madrid.

My one crochet project for the wedding (although more than a few have tempted me) was a crochet bridal bouquet. So here it is:

A view from above!

Please check out our photographer's photos of my bouquet on the Big Day here!

I was inspired by these beautiful bouquets to make my own:

After spending a lot of time researching floral patterns and bouquet techniques, I started crocheting.

And I crocheted. And crocheted. And crocheted. And then, just when I thought my fingers would fall off, I crocheted some more. All in all, I made about 30 crocheted flowers, 27 of which I used in the final bouquet. Some were discarded because of color - I started with yellow and white before deciding that I wanted different red and white tones.

After I finished crocheting each flower, I added a stem using 0.3mm or 0.6mm wires (three in each flower). I inserted the wire into the button, if possible, or directly through multiple layers of the flower if necessary. Then I twisted the wires together (carpal tunnel, anyone?). Each wire stem then had to be covered with green floral tape.

Just a hint: Do all of your taping last, because your hands get quite sticky and you won't want to touch your yarn after taping. I figured this out half-way through my flowers and then spent an afternoon taping the remaining half.

I used patterns from Ravelry - some free and some not - to make my flowers. Some are more traditional roses made with 100% cotton yarn and some are intricate little flowers made with size 8 crochet thread, a 1.6mm hook (ouch!) and 0.3mm metal wire crocheted directly into the petals.

Just when my work station started to look like a floral nightmare, I started wondering: How exactly do I turn these flowers into a bouquet?

Do I use a filler flower? Do I incorporate leaves? How do I get the flowers to stay together without moving around? These are some of the questions that I researched, thought about and discussed with my great crochet buddy Madalena!

After a lot of thinking (and dozens of trial bouquet arrangements without taping) I decided it was time to start making a flower bouquet from all of my crochet flowers!

First, I prepared a large work table with green floral tape and a comfortable chair.

I laid out all of my flowers according to size and color so that I could see what remained as I was arranging.

My bouquet was based on one center rose, four roses surrounding the center rose, four between those surrounding roses, and four between those surrounding roses. This helped me create a rounded bouquet shape, and I chose the smallest rose as the center. Then I added in smaller filler flowers throughout the bouquet.

So I picked up the center rose and one of the surrounding roses and taped them together. You want to leave 2-3" before you start taping so that you have some wiggle room to readjust the flowers once they are all taped together. This goes for all the flowers.

You want to start taping about where my fingers are.

Then I added in another surrounding rose and a filler flower:

This is what the bouquet looked like from the bottom:

Don't mind that random red rose that's perpendicular to the bouquet. He just got in the way!

I continued taping each layer of four roses. You want to run the tape up and down the stems in a length of about 2-3", always remembering to leave some space between the top of the tape and the bud of the flower.

I added in filler flowers on each layer. My hands got very sticky from the tape, and it became hard to see the vision once I had a lot of flowers (which is why it helped to see clearly what I had left on the table in front of me).

Once I finished adding flowers, I taped around everything about 20 times and then broke off the floral tape.

Here's the finished product (for now!)

The next step is to trim up the "stems" and add a satin ribbon so that my hands don't get sticky on the big day!

Have you made a crochet flower bouquet? What tips and tricks helped you?