How to Sew Sequins

Sequins, sparkles, shiny things - they're all around me now! I thought this princess/dress-up silliness would be one of my least-favorite parts of parenting a daughter, but I was SO WRONG. I adore watching my daughter dress up in a sparkly costume then run around playing with bugs in the yard.

When else in her life will she be able to live such a fantasy existence? And the look on her face when I hand her a sparkly homemade treat is pretty much the greatest gift I could ever hope for. So to that end, I have been sewing a lot of sequins lately.

I thought I'd take a minute and show you how. It's quite easy, it just takes a little patience. But you know it will be worth it. And don't try to tell me sequins are only for girls, I can totally see a sequin pirate patch or mustache on little gordon, no?

Learn How to Sew On A Sequin after the jump...
How to Sew Sequins

So you'll need a few supplies. You can sew sequins with or without seed beads, but I think they look extra nice with them. I'll show you how to do it both ways. You will need:

Umm, sequins. You can get a jar or a string of them. I have a string. Seed beads in a matching or contrasting color, for whatever look you are going for. I picked mine up at the sewing shop around the corner, most shops will have them. You will need a sewing needle (that will fit through the bead) and some regular sewing thread.


These sequins strings use some magical string trickery to ensure that they don't all fall off. Kinda neat. You could actually just sew the string on if you need rows of sequins, but I'll show you how to sew individual sequins.


Now get your seed beads ready. I like to put a few in the lid.


So thread your needle and knot your thread at the end. I made my knot extra huge for photography's sake, but you don't need too. You can use any type of fabric but I used felt just for this tute.


Bring your needle up through your fabric and through the center of one sequin.


Slip a seed bead onto your needle (I just pick them up with the needle and slide it down).


Bring your needle back into the hole on the front of the sequin:


Pull it through. I stopped to take a picture so you can see how the thread wraps around the bead.


Pull it taught.


And knot the thread on the opposite side. For super extra fancy security you can cut your thread after you attach each sequin, but I don't cut it. But you MUST knot it, otherwise if you lose one sequin, you're going to lose them all, and that would be a bummer.


Then you can move onto your next sequin. This time I'm going to show you how to attach the sequin without a seed bead. So bring your needle up through the fabric and the center of one sequin.


Then bring it back down the other side. You can do this once, knot it, then move on to your next sequin for a fluffy effect, but you won't be able to wash it very effectively, as it is easy to lose sequins that are only sewn on with one pass. So you can bring the needle back up through the fabric and the center of the sequin again, then back down 1/3 of the way around the circle, creating a V shape like this:


For super extra security, you can make one more pass, so your sequin is held on in three places, then knotting on the back. Playing with how many passes you take can create different patterns and looks and can be pretty fun. I'm starting to like hand sewing more than I used too. Maybe because it is so sparkly and my daughter adores it so much.


So on this heart I sewed sequins in all three ways so you could check out the way they look.


Then I cut a matching piece of felt, made a slit in it for a hairclip, and hot glued the two pieces together:


Then you can create lots of fun things, or just add a couple sequins to other projects, like this little feather hairclip i whipped up in a couple minutes.




I'll share some tutes on a few things I made with sequins soon!