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!

Spring Rag Wreath

March 25, 2014 · 3 Comments

Who says garlands are just for Christmas?

Packing up the remains of Christmas always makes me sad, and as I was packing up the door hanger thing, I thought, well why not make another wreath? There are dozens of ideas on pinterest and elsewhere in internet land and I’ve noticed when watching American stuff on telly that they often have wreaths on their doors and not just as Christmas. So if our American friends can, why can’t I bring a little bit of America to my corner of Norfolk? It’s certainly no worse than flaky FBI agents yelling at us to “lock stuff down” through our televisions.

I did consider getting some plastic flowers and attaching them to a willow wreath, but I couldn’t find the wreath, I think it’s in the loft somewhere along with a wasps nest and piles of old tat. So I opted for a rag wreath.

On having a rummage, I found that I had quite a lot of scraps of fresh, zingy green too small to do anything with. I cut the scraps into strips 2cm wide and between 10cm and 20cm long. It didn’t look like enough to make a wreath so I had another rummage and found some bits of lace and broderie anglaise. I cut those up too and added them to my pile.

To make the hoop I found some garden wire and twisted it into a circle. To hold the ends I wrapped some masking take around them. This also provided a marker so I didn’t forget where the top was.

I started off with some plain green fabric strips, tying them onto the ring and spacing them out evenly. I then chose some other strips and tied those on in the spaces. And that was pretty much it! I just kept going until I ran out of strips, making sure that the different fabrics were evenly spaced out. I then tied on the lace and broderie anglaise where there were gaps. There are enough strips on the ring to hold them all in place.

The hook stuck out quite a long way when I hung the wreath on it so I tied a piece of green ribbon around it to disguise it a bit.

Boy 1’s friends mum admired it when she came round to pick friend up last week. She said it brightened up our alleyway and asked if she’d missed something! It was all very easy to do, it used up some odds and ends of fabric that were too small to do much else with and it only took me a couple of hours to make.

Have any others of you made a garland for your door? I’d love to see them!