Make a Fabric Bud Vase in One Hour

Fabric pieced bud vase...

One of my pet peeves is when someone stretches the truth about a sewing project by describing it as "sew a whatever in x number of minutes".

More often than not, I look at the item and think to myself, that's going to take way more than x minutes. Or, worse, if you only take x minutes, the result is going to look awful.

You probably know that such projects are often named like that to promote click-throughs. I recently came across one that was titled "5 minute whatever" but further along in the description, it actually stated that "you can make this in 10 minutes". Perhaps had I read further still, it would have turned into a twenty or thirty minute project.

Fudging aside, I suppose if you make enough of whatever these are, at some point you'll be sufficiently skilled to make one in the shortest time frame. Otherwise, unless something is truly small and simple — like my 5 minute lip balm carrier — most things are going to take more than mere minutes to make.

Anyway, now that I've babbled on about this, let me show you how to make a bud vase in about an hour.

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(It may actually only take about thirty minutes, but I don't want to be an example of one of my pet peeves!)

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Several weeks ago, I showed you a fishbowl vase that I made with some Tim Holtz fabric. There was still some of the fat quarter left over, so the week before Mother's Day, I decided to make my mom a bud vase out of it.

A small vase of tulips for Mom...

Actually, let me backtrack. My first plan was to make her some tulips. Then it occurred to me that maybe I should put those tulips in something.

To make this, you'll need to round up two pieces of (single sided) fusible Peltex interfacing, one 8" x 8" (20cm x 20cm) and one 2" x 2" (5cm x 5cm). You'll also need the same amount of fabric and some matching thread.

Cut Peltex to size, draw lines and and fuse to back of fabric...

On the non-fusible side of the large piece of Peltex, draw lines to create four vertical sections that are 2" (5cm) wide. Fuse the interfacing onto the back of the fabric. As you can see, I had a bigger piece of fabric, so was able to fussy cut. 

I would suggest that for best results, fuse and then trim up the fabric, rather than cut the fabric to the exact size as the Peltex and hope for perfection. In the same way, fuse together the small 2" x 2" (5cm x 5cm) square of interfacing to a corresponding piece of fabric.

Cut along the drawn lines to create four identical panels measuring 8" x 2" (20cm x 5cm). Whether or not your fabric has an obvious continuous print like mine — but especially if it does — mark the bottom of each panel with a number from 1 through 4, so you can keep track of which one should be attached to which.

Slice into four panels and zigzag stitch...

Zigzag stitch around all four edges of the small square piece and along the short edges of each of the four panels. Then zigzag stitch panel 1 to panel 2, and panel 3 to panel 4. (If you're unsure of how to proceed, check out this post.)

Attach the small square to the end of one of the panels in the same way.

Zigzag stitch all of the short edges...

I was moving along so quickly when I sewed this up and took these photos that I forgot about the bottom edge of the panels. So in the photo above, the three edges that are marked with a black line should be zigzag stitched also. (The fact that I ended up doing them afterwards means that it's not a critical error.)

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The next step is to join the two pairs together.

Once joined, fold the entire thing in half so that panels 1 and 4 are stacked on top of one another (this is shown below as the edge next to the black line); zigzag stitch together.

The last bit of machine sewing...

All that remains is to hand sew the bottom base piece to the remaining three sides.

Hand sew the base...

Since the edges have been zigzagged already, whatever stitch you employ to secure the base won't be visible as long as you use the same colour thread.

Now Mom has a slice of our home city too...

Final suggestion is to put a small bag of pennies or rocks into the bottom to weigh it down before using it. It's very light and may fall over otherwise.

View of the bottom...

What do you think? Is it doable in an hour? I believe so, even with the hand sewing at the end.

I was originally going to try for a cylindrical vase, but ultimately decided against it. I wasn't sure that the Peltex would maintain the shape all the way up. However, perhaps my selvage project shows that a cylindrical vase is possible using other materials? Food for thought.

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I ended up using my selections of Dollar Tree green fabric to the fullest extent. Including the four leaves attached to these three new tulips, I managed to get eighteen leaves in total. Not too shabby for three bucks and some scraps of fusible fleece.

Yellow (vertical) striped tulips...

The three tulips were made out of remnants from my other half's old duvet cover. I made one of each style from Almudena's YouTube tutorial, this time ensuring that the stripes ran vertically.

P.S. Mom appreciated the gift.

'Til next...