Today, I’m making this beaded Poinsettia applique to add sparkles to your holiday costumes or décor.
It’s not super Christmas-y, so you can add them to your costumes before and after holidays as well! In addition, it’s made with simple beading techniques, so give it a try. Let’s get started!
Click here to get the Poinsettia applique pattern!
To make these Poinsettia appliques, you need:
Felt – We’ll use felt as the base of this applique. You need about 12cm x 12cm (5in x 5in) of red and green felt.
Your favorite Poinsettia pattern – You can download my free pattern from here!
Stones and beads – I used stones and beads in similar shades. It’s a great project to use up leftover stones and beads in your stash! These are what I used:
For petals:
About 350 – size 6 gold seed beads
3 – 12mm gold stones
5 – 5mm x 10mm beige navette stones
5 – 14mm x 17mm red pear-shaped stones
5 – 6mm x 15mm red navette stones
5 – 8mm x 10mm pink oval stones
9 – 8mm red round beads
6 – 10mm red bicone beads
About 60 – size 6 red seed beads
For leaves:
About 155 – size 10 green seed beads
7 – 10mm green bicone beads
11 – 8mm green faceted round beads
7 – 5mm green faceted round beads
Matching color threads
How to Make DIY Beaded Poinsettia Applique
Trace the pattern
First, trace the poinsettia pattern on your felt base. Again, you can download my pattern from here!
If you use mine, I have a pattern for the petals and one for leaves. Cut both of them out, and trace them on the red and green felt. Copy the center marks on the pattern as well.
Start sewing!
I’m starting with the red petal part. First, take a double-threaded needle, and sew on a few stones right in the center. I used these 3 light gold stones.
Next trace the outline using these gold seed beads. I’m using the bead rope technique, which I show step by step in this tutorial. It’s a great technique to outline a shape or frame a stone. I traced the outline of all these petals using this technique.
Sew stones randomly (but purposefully)
First, take large stones and sew them on randomly.
Next, use medium size. You can mix in stones, beads, sequins… anything goes!
I’m going for organized randomness here. Mix different pieces in all areas, so every section has a little bit of all elements. They appear to be randomly placed, but it’s pretty when you look at the whole thing!
I like this technique of mixing different sizes of stones and beads in an applique, because it’s very easy! It doesn’t take much sewing techniques. But mixing textures makes the finished piece look more sophisticated. The key is to keep your color theme consistent, so here I used dark to light shades of red and a little surprise of gold and beige.
Fill the rest
Then fill in the rest with smaller stones and beads. It’s like coloring the empty areas with beads.
Once all areas are filled, cut along the outline. Be careful not to cut any threads on the back.
Once the petals are complete, let’s move on to the leaves.
As we did for the petals, work on the outline first. I used the same bead rope technique with these green seed beads.
For the leaves, you just need to work on the visible sections. My pattern shows where the layers overlap with dotted lines, so check the pattern and decorate the visible areas and a little inside of the dotted lines to make sure undecorated areas don’t show under the petals.
Use the same technique to place your beads randomly to fill the rest of the leaves.
Cut out the leaves, and now match up the center points of both layers. And sew them together around the center stones.
And your beaded poinsettia applique is complete! It’s so pretty and sparkly!
You can add ribbon to use as an ornament…
Or add a clip to make it into a festive brooch or hair accessory.
Check the tutorials to learn how to turn an applique into a brooch and a hair clip.
And of course, you can add it to your costume for your winter performances. It’s so sparkly and festive, and makes a great holiday gift as well!
And if you love making beaded appliques like this, I have a few other beaded applique tutorials and patterns, so have a look at them:
Hope you liked this beaded Poinsettia applique tutorial, and if you did, please share this tutorial with your dancer and costumer friends!
Again, you can download the poinsettia applique pattern here:
Download the Poinsettia applique pattern here!
And if you want to make more beaded appliques and learn more advanced beading techniques, check out my Applique Making for Belly Dance Costumes premium course!
Thanks for reading, and keep sparkling!
P.S. Pin this image on your applique board!
Like what you read? Want to make more costuming bits yourself?
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