How to Make a Dried Fruit Wreath

November 8, 2015 · 7 Comments

One of my favourite Christmas tasks is unpacking all the decorations. I have memories of doing this as a little girl, when my dad would bring the box down from the loft.

The tree (always a real one) would be in the front room and we would remove the tinsel and wrap it round ourselves like scarves while my dad put the lights on the tree.

The lights had to go on first. That was The Rule. Then the tinsel, then everything else. Glass baubles that hung of my grandmother’s tree, the weird swinging Santa with a massive head that had belonged to my other grandmother, woolly santas and things we made at school.

One thing that makes these memories so vivid is that I can remember both the smell of the box and the smell of the Christmas tree.

Now when I do this with my own children, our box of decorations has its own smell. When I open the lid, the Christmas smell that comes out is the scent of the dried fruit decorations I have made over the last couple of years.

This year I decided to make a dried fruit wreath. It is wonderfully easy to do and providing the fruit is all properly dry when you pack it away after Christmas, it should keep for several years.

How to Make a Dried Fruit Wreath

You Will Need: about 60 dried fruit slices (This works out at about 5 oranges and 3 lemons if you are drying the fruit yourself. Obviously this depends on the size of the fruit and how many slices you can get out of each one), 7 whole small citrus fruit (I used 3 limes and 4 satsumas), a wire coat hanger or some garden wire, ribbon (I used red burlap ribbon), a skewer or a darning needle, tape.

If you are drying your own fruit, full instructions can be found here.

The whole fruit takes longer; if you are organised and put the whole fruit in the oven first thing in the morning with some of the slices, you’ll be able to swap the slices over at lunch time and have your fruit more or less dried by the evening.

If the fruit isn’t completely dry when you get it out of the oven, leave it on a plate near a warm radiator on on a sunny windowsill for a couple of days should finish them off.

1. Remove the hook and the twisty bits from the hanger. The best way to do this is with wire cutters, but if you don’t have any, just cut through the plastic with an old pair of scissors, then bend the wire back and forth until it snaps.

2. Bend the wire into a circle shape. If you are using garden wire, you will need to cut about 80 cm.

3. Slip a lime onto the coat hanger and slide it along about half way. If the hole is not big enough (or if you forgot to make one!), use the skewer or darning needle to make it a bit bigger. If it sticks on the hanger, just wiggle at along until it is in the right place.

4. Take 7 of the dried fruit slices and arrange so that you have a larger slice in the middle and the ones either side get gradually smaller.

5. Thread the fruit onto the coat hanger so that they are on one side of the lime.

6. Repeat step 4 and thread on the fruit so that it is on the other side of the lime.

7. Thread 1 satsuma onto each side.

8. Repeat Step 4 with the fruit again. Keep alternating whole fruit and slices until there is about 5 ish cm of wire left at each end.

9. Overlap the ends of the wire and stick them together with tape. Cover the tape with a piece of ribbon.

10. Make a bow. The way to get perfect bows is not to tie them! Cut a length of ribbon and fold it into a loop. Fold it over a couple of times in the middle in a concertina kind of way. Sew a few stitches to hold it in place. Cut another piece of ribbon and wrap it round the middle. Sew to hold it in place. Cut another length for the tails. Fold in half and sew to the back of the bow. Carefully sew the bow to the ribbon covering the tape. I just put a few stitches on either side so that I can put the door wreath holder behind the bow when I hang it up.

11. Hang it on your door and enjoy your beautiful wreath that also smells lovely!

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like:

How to Make a Dried Fruit Garland

How to Make a Pine Cone Garland

How to Make Dried Fruit Decorations

You might also like to check out this Pinterest board for more natural and upcycled Christmas ideas!

This post contains affiliate links.

Autumn Tied Wreath

October 25, 2015 · 2 Comments

A couple of years ago I adopted the American practice of hanging a wreath on my door.

The main reason was because I didn’t like how naked my door looked after I took the Christmas wreath down!

This tied wreath is very easy to make and is a great way to use up scraps of fabric.

I have included some affiliate links.

How to Make a Tied Wreath

You will need: garden wire or a wire coat hanger, tape (I used electrical tape), scraps of fabric cut into strips, ribbon.
.

1. Cut the fabric into strips approximately 10 cm x 2 cm.

2. Cut a length of garden wire about 60 cm long and bend it round so that you have a circle about 20 cm in diameter. Use the electrical tape to hold it together.

3. Start tying the fabric strips onto the wire ring at regular intervals.

I started with one colour, then moved on to the next, making sure that the different colours and patterns were evenly distributed.

4. Keep tying the strips on until the wire ring is covered. Push the strips up close to each other so that there are no spaces.

5. Last year I decorated this wreath with pine cones. However, as I found some beautiful orange ribbon while I was having a rummage, I decided to make a bow instead.

The way to get perfect bows is to not tie a bow at all! Instead, cut a length of ribbon and fold it into a loop with the join at the back. Sew a few stitches to hold it (or use double sided tape if you’re feeling lazy!).

Cut another piece of ribbon and wrap it round the middle of the loop. Sew in place with a few stitches.

Cut two more pieces of ribbon for the tails and sew those on at the back. Thread a piece of wire (an old paper clip will do) through the back and attach it to your wreath.

You can find some more detailed instructions for making a bow with pictures here.

If you like this post, you might also like to read these:

How to Make Autumn Bunting

How to Make a Christmas Wreath

A Spring Wreath Tutorial

How to Make a Burlap Wreath

January 26, 2015 · 12 Comments

I always make a wreath for our door at Christmas, and after Christmas, once all the decorations have come down, my naked front door bothers me almost as much as the space left by the Christmas tree.

So last year I decided to adopt the American custom of always hanging a wreath on my door!

I could have just whipped out the spring wreath I made last year, but it is definitely not spring yet and I wanted to have a go at making a burlap wreath (I’ve seen lots of gorgeous ones on Pinterest!).

Here is my burlap wreath tutorial! It is very easy to make. It doesn’t require a special wreath form or a hot glue gun, just a wire coat hanger, some burlap ribbon, some other ribbon to make a bow and some wire. You could use florists’ wire. I used a couple of paper clips! The finished wreath measures about 23 cm across.

How to Make a Burlap Wreath

I have included affiliate links.

You will need: a wire coat hanger (or some thick, plastic coated wire), 6 m burlap ribbon, 3 m of ribbon ( I used about 1.5 m of green chevron ribbon and about 1 m of the grey, which I bought here from Etsy), florists’ wire or 2 paper clips, a needle and thread.

1. Bend the coat hanger into a circle. Untwist the ends and remove the hook. You can either use wire cutters or just bend it back and forth until it snaps.

2. If your burlap ribbon has raw edges, you might want to finish them using an overlocking stitch on the sewing machine. This step is optional though! I have no problem with frayed edges usually, I just didn’t want bits coming off which result in having to sweep the path or hoover the kitchen again!

3. To attach the burlap to the coat hanger, I basically used the coat hanger like a giant needle and threaded it through the burlap as though I was doing a giant running stitch.

The stitches need to be about 10 cm long. To make this easier, I marked off 10 cm from the end of the hanger using a Sharpie.

The only thing that makes it not quite like running stitch is that I twisted the burlap before threading the wire through.

So: thread about 10 cm of burlap onto the hanger,

twist the burlap,

thread the wire through.

Push it down and round to the left side, then repeat until all the ribbon is on the coat hanger.

Twisting it gives it a more interesting look than just threading it straight on and pushing it round to the side means that your twists all go in the same direction.

4. Once the ribbon is all on the wire, you will need to join the ends of the coat hanger back together. I tried twisting the ends together but it was too hard. So instead I made 2 loops and linked them together. Don’t worry about this looking messy, you’ll be making a pretty bow to cover it up!

5. To make the bow, you will need to make 5 loops, 3 longer ones and 2 smaller. I cut 3 21 cm pieces of green chevron ribbon and 2 17 cm pieces of grey chevron ribbon.

6. Fold in half to find the middle. Overlap the ends so that they are in the middle. Using a needle and thread, sew a few stitches through the middle to hold it all in place. Repeat for all your bits of ribbon.

7. Arrange your loops so that the smaller ones are at the front and they are all spread out. Sew a few stitches through the middle to hold them.

8. Cut another piece of ribbon 9 cm long. Wrap this around your loops to hide the stitches and to make it look like a bow!

Sew the ends together at the back.

9. For the tails, I cut 2 pieces of green chevron ribbon 25 cm long and 2 of the grey 24 cm long. Sew them to the back of the bow. Cut the ends diagonally to prevent fraying.

10. Thread wire through the back of the bow and attach it to the wreath to hide the wire loops.

Hang it on your door and wait for people to admire it!You can read about the other wreaths I have made here:

A Spring Rag Wreath

A Summer Wreath using a willow wreath form and silk flowers

An Autumn Wreath

A Christmas Wreath using natural materials.I’ll be adding this post to these linky parties! Fluster Buster’s Creative Muster, Creative Mondays, Handmade Monday, Frugal Crafty Home, Craftastic Monday, Monday Handmade, Ladybug Blessings, Totally Terrific Tuesday, Inspire Me Monday, Show and Tell Link Party Time, Do Tell Tuesday, No Rules Weekend, Craft Frenzy Friday, My Favourite Things Saturday, Submarine Sunday.

How to Make an Autumn Wreath

October 13, 2014 · 1 Comment

Hanging my autumn bunting up on the front of my house seems to have brought about a change in the weather. It is most definitely autumn now. Wet, cold and windy means warm socks, boots, coats and hot chocolate, not to mention looking at beautiful autumns, mostly in America, on Pinterest. Yay!

Autumn also means that my floral, summery wreath needs to go into storage upstairs to be replaced by an autumn wreath.

I’ve seen lots of beautiful wreaths on Pinterest ( I’ve got a board of them here) but I decided to make another ruffle rag wreath and to add pine cones and other natural autumnal stuff.

How to Make an Autumn Wreath

After making the bunting, I had lots of little bits of fabric left over in beautiful autumn colours. I cut them into slightly shorter strips this time, about 10 cm long and 2 cm wide.

To make the ring, I cut a piece of garden wire long enough to bend into 3 circles 20 cm in diameter. I used electrical tape to hold it in four places.

I took one of my pile of strips and began tying them onto the wire ring at regular intervals. Once I had tied them all on, I started with the second pile. I tied those on in the spaces. Then I started with the third pile, until I had used up all the strips and they were all close together with no spaces.

Next I put 3 pine cones each onto a length of florists’ wire and tied some ribbon in a bow around each wire. Then I tied the wires together with some more ribbon.

Using the wire, I attached the pine cones and the ribbon to the bottom of the wreath.

Here is the finished wreath!

The shorter strips definitely worked better than the longer ones I used to make my spring wreath.

I had planned to put lots of berries, pine cones and autumn leaves on the wreath, but I was very happy with how it looked without them!

A Summer Door Wreath

June 14, 2014 · 4 Comments

A few months ago I decided to adopt the American practice of hanging a door wreath on the front door all year round and not just at Christmas. I made a ruffle rag wreath out of scraps of green fabrics that were left over from another project.

I wanted to make a summer door wreath, so after trawling Pinterest for hours, I opted to make a floral wreath using a willow wreath and some silk flowers.Here’s how I did it in case you want to make your own!

You will need a willow wreath and some silk flowers.

Choose 3 largish flowers and poke them through the willow. I cut the stems to make them a bit shorter.I found this harder to do than I was expecting. Also the flowers snapped off quite easily! Use some other flowers to fill in the gaps. The flowers I used had wire in the stems, so I bent them round to keep them in place. Otherwise a hot glue gun would do the trick. Add some small flowers to fill any remaining gaps and to add some variety. Tie a bow at the top. That’s it! Easy!