Free Pattern For A Fabulous Easy Frida Kahlo Cushion

I was inspired by Frida Kahlo’s iconic colourful self-portraits, especially the ones with the flowers in her hair to create this fabulous floral Felt Frida Kahlo cushion.

I love to make faux flowers, whether out of paper, like with the gorgeous pineapple paper flower wall decoration, my upcycled fabric flowers, or even beautiful map roses.

As these flowers were going to be for a cushion/pillow, I decided to use felted wool to make them. So they would be nice and soft.

The Frida Kahlo cushion was made from mainly repurposed materials. I used an old cream woollen camp blanket as my cushion/pillow cover. You can, however, use any old plain cream cushion cover.

The handmade fabric flowers were made from my stash of sweater felt scraps from my previous repurposed old wool sweater crafts. I did use a tiny bit of craft felt as well.

You should also check out this fabulous Frida Kahlo ornament I made. This time with much smaller felt flowers. There are many more Frida Kahlo crafts here.

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How To Make A Felt Floral Frida Kahlo Cushion (Pillow)

What you need to make a Frida Kahlo Cushion

• Old wool blanket to make a cushion/pillow cover – Or you can use an existing plain pillow cover approx 50cm X 50cm, felt or linen.
• Sweater felt, or craft felt in various colours. You will need black for the hair and eyebrows and red for the lips. Green for the leaves and other colours for the flowers you would like to make.
   
  I used mainly scraps of felted sweater wool left over from other crafts. I did, however, supplement this with some black craft felt for the hairpiece, as there was no black in my stash.

• Frida Kahlo face template – You can download mine here.
• Needle and thread.
• Fabric mod podge

How to make a felt flower Frida Cushion

Step 1: Print off the template for the Frida Kahlo hair, monobrow and lips. Using the template cut out the hair and eyebrows in black felt. Cut the lips out in red felt.

Step 2: Cut the wool blanket into 2 x 50cm squares. (If using an existing cushion cover, you can miss this bit). Then attach the Frida Kahlo felt template pieces to one of the blanket squares (or cushion cover).

You can either use fabric glue to stick the felt pieces to the fabric or hand sew them. It’s up to you!

Making the Frida Kahlo Felt Flowers

Step 3: The fun part is making the felt flowers for the Frida Kahlo headpiece. Make several flowers, such as a white daisy, a yellow carnation and several different coloured roses.

Step 4: The pink, purple and beige flowers were made using the same method I used for my upcycled denim wreath with felt roses. However, the main difference was that the petals were sewn together rather than glued this time. I thought the thread would be stronger than glue. Also, I did not add a stem.

Step 5: The yellow carnation was made the same way I made this purple succulent for the repurposed felt succulent garden. The only difference is the colour.

Step 6: I cut a square of red felt into a spiral for the rolled red rose. This was rolled and stitched into shape, just like this simple tutorial.

Step 7: The last flower I made for the Frida Kahlo cushion headpiece was a big white daisy. I rolled a small piece of yellow sweater felt into a centrepiece and then stitched white petals to it to form a giant daisy.

It was made similarly to this crepe paper daisy but with felt instead.

Step 9: Finally, I cut out some simple felt green leaf shapes to complete the foliage for the Frida Kahlo floral headpiece.

Assembling the Frida Kahlo Floral Pillow

Step 10: Once all the felt flowers and leaves were made, I pinned them to the top of the black felt hair on the cushion. When I was happy with the layout, I stitched these flowers to the pillow cover.

Step 11: Finally, the back of the cushion cover was pinned to the front, and the sides were stitched together using a blanket stitch. (If you aren’t sure about blanket stitch, there is a tutorial on this my felt letters tutorial. I used a lovely bright green embroidery thread that matched the colour of the leaves in the headdress to stitch the cushion together.
 
Before stitching the pillow shut, don’t forget to put the cushion pad inside the cover. If you want a removable cushion cover, you can always make an envelope back (like I did with this supersized cross stitch cushion) to the cushion or add a zip.

 
Step 12: I added some of my handmade denim tassels to finish off the colourful felt flower pillow. I stitched one to each corner of the cushion.

Instead of using DIY felt flowers, you could make some Pom Pom flowers to decorate the headdress on the Frida Kahlo cushion. Or you could use the pom poms instead of the tassels for the corners.

 

 Like me, you love decorating your home with flowers, so you might like this pineapple paper flower wall decoration. This cushion will look pretty good next to this DIY felt tropical lampshade.

Don’t forget to check out my other recycled sweater felt crafts and these other pillow cover design ideas.

 For more fabulous free sewing patterns for the home, visit allfreesewing.com.