How To Make a Burlap Christmas Wreath

December 2, 2017 · 8 Comments

How To Make a Burlap Christmas Wreath

One of my favourite pre Christmas jobs is to make a wreath for the front door.

In the past, I’ve used a foam ring and made one with greenery and berries. But over the last few years, I’ve tried making different kinds of wreaths instead.

Making a green wreath was going to be harder this year as my source of Leyland Cypress has been cut down and replaced with a fence. It’s less work for the people who run the plant nursery behind us, but it’s less useful at Christmas!

The oasis flower foam people recently sent me a couple of rolls of burlap ribbon along with a vase and a lantern. I’ve used the lantern, and I wanted to make something with the ribbon.

I also made some felt poinsettias earlier in the week, and as somebody on Facebook suggested, they would look very nice on a wreath!

So I decided to make a burlap Christmas wreath.

Initially I decided to have a go at making a bubble wreath, but I discovered that my wreath form wasn’t the same as the ones used in the tutorials I’d found on YouTube. It’s also not as easy as you’d think, and you need masses of ribbon! I had 3 rolls, each with 3 metres on, and it wasn’t enough.

So I undid it and tried something else! This is what I came up with.

The ribbon is plaited around the wreath form. The messy bit where the ends are is covered with the bow. The felt flowers are the same ones I made earlier in the week (the tutorial for them is here).

So here are the instructions for making a plaited burlap Christmas wreath!

I have included some affiliate links.

Plaited Burlap Christmas Wreath Tutorial

You Will Need

A wreath form (I got these from Amazon), wide ribbon in 3 different designs (3 3 metre rolls will be plenty), felt flowers (the tutorial for the poinsettias is here), a pipecleaner or an elastic band, a needle and thread.

The burlap ribbon I used came from Oasis Home and Hobby. The tartan stuff came from the weird little shop over the road from my house.

Making the Wreath

1. Using the pipe cleaner or an elastic band, secure the ends of the ribbon to the wreath form.

2. Start to plait the ribbon around the wreath form. To do this, take the ribbon from the back around the edge, then through the gap in the centre.

Keep going! Try to keep the plaited sections about the same size.

When you get to the joins, just take care to cover them up. You can always pull the ribbon a little bit to hide them.

3. When you get back to wear you started, tie the ends by wrapping them round the wreath once and pulling the ends through.

4. To make the bow, make a loop with a piece of ribbon and sew the ends together. You might like to gather it a little bit.

5. Hold the bow to the wreath over the ends, then take a piece of contrast ribbon and wrap it around the wreath and the bow. Sew a few stitches at the back to hold it in place.

6. Cut another piece of ribbon and fold it in half to make the tails of the bow. Sew it to the back of the wreath.

7. Take your felt flowers and arrange them at the bottom of the wreath on one side. Sew them to the wreath by sewing a couple of stitches into the back of the flower and passing the needle through the wreath. Sew a couple of stitches into the ribbon and tie off the ends.

8. Hang the wreath on your door and expect to feel Christmassy every time you come home!

If you like making wreaths, you might like to take a look at these wreath tutorials here.

How To Make Felt Poinsettias

November 30, 2017 · 4 Comments

How To Make Felt Poinsettias

A splash of red is always lovely at Christmas. Poinsettias offer that splash of red, but unfortunately for any plants that enter my house, the chances of them lasting more than a week are slim.

Thankfully there is an alternative for those of us who do not have green fingers!

I’ve been amazed at the beautiful flowers some people are able to make just from a simple medium like felt. And once the flowers are made, they can be used in all sorts of ways, including ways that might not be possible with real flowers.

So here’s a tutorial showing how to make felt poinsettias!

I have included some affiliate links.

How To Make Felt Poinsettias

You Will Need

Red felt (you can buy it by the sheet at Minerva Crafts and at Hobbycraft), needle and thread, buttons or sequins and beads, template (download it here or you could make your own).

If you use my template, the finished flowers will be approximately 8 cm across.

Instructions

1. Make your template, or print and cut out the one I used. If you’re making your own, the template will need to be a symmetrical leaf shape.

2. Cut leaf shapes from red felt. You will need 8 for each of the felt poinsettias you want to make.

3. Take one of the felt shapes and fold it in half lengthways. Sew a couple of stitches up from the point to hold the shape. Do this for the other 7.

4. With the thread doubled, thread the petals onto the needle near where you sewed in the previous step. Pull the thread through, leaving a tail. When you have threaded all the petals, pull both ends and tie them together in a knot.

5. Arrange the petals, then sew a sequin and a bead to the centre of the flower. Pass the thread from the back of the flower to the front, then through the sequin. Pass the needle through the bead, then back through the sequin and through to the back of the flower. Tie off the thread. You could sew a button instead if you wanted to, or even glue a sparkly thing to the centre.

6. Use one of the tails to sew a couple of loops to the back of the flower. You can then use these loops to sew the flowers to something, or thread a piece of wire or a pipe cleaner through the loops to attach the felt poinsettias.

If you make some felt poinsettias I’d love to see! Share them on Tea and a Sewing Machine’s Facebook page!

Christmas Lantern Arrangement

November 24, 2017 · 2 Comments

Christmas Lantern Arrangement

I’m always so happy that Christmas is at the darkest time of the year.

I love the winter anyway, and one of my favourite things is putting the lamps on and lighting the fire. You can’t do that in the summer when it’s warm and still light at 9.30 pm!

Since visiting Oslo last year, we now eat breakfast by candlelight on dark mornings. And with Christingles, carols by candlelight and remembering that Jesus came as the light of the world all coming up, Christmas is the perfect excuse for more candles!

If you’re not big on flower arrangements, don’t worry. This is easy :).

I’d actually planned to use one fat candle, but they didn’t have any at the weird little shop in my village, so I used 3 standard candles instead.

You could also use tealights, or even fairy lights in a tangle in the centre if you didn’t want to use candles at all.

For the greenery and berries, I raided the hedgerows on my way home from taking my boys to school! You could try the garden or even a bunch of Christmas flowers from the supermarket. For the actual greenery, an out of control leyland cypress hedge is ideal!

Here are the instructions for making a Christmas lantern arrangement.

Instructions For Making a Christmas Lantern Arrangement

You Will Need

A lantern (I was sent this one by Oasis Home and Hobby), some oasis, ribbon (I used this, again from Oasis Home and Hobby), candles, berries, greenery, pinecones, florists’ wire.

Making the Christmas Lantern Arrangement

1. Cut the oasis to size. You only need a smallish piece as it needs to fit through the neck of the lantern. About 6-7 cm high and about the same across is a good size. If you’re using the ribbon on the roll, this is actually the perfect size, so you can just cut the oasis down to the same size as the roll of ribbon.

When you’ve cut the oasis down to the right size, pop it in the sink to soak. Being a small piece, it won’t need very long, so if you do this first, it should be ready to use by the time you’ve sorted out the other bits.

2. Cut a length of ribbon about 150 cm long. To tie it around the top of the lantern, you’ll need to take the handle off by unscrewing it at the neck.

On the ribbon, mark where the screws are and make 2 little holes. You could cut it if you’re using a ribbon with a close weave. As the ribbon I used was loosely woven, I just poked the blades of the scissors into it and wiggled them about to make a hole.

Wrap the ribbon around the neck of the lantern, poking the screws through the holes you made. Tie the ribbon in a bow and reattach the handle.

3. Cut the greenery into pieces 10-15 cm long. Cut the berries into smaller bunches. Wrap florist’s wire around the bottom of the pine cones.

4. If you’re using 3 candles, you might like to cut a bit off the bottom of 2 of them so that they are different heights. This is what I did :).

5. Now retrieve the oasis from the sink. Push the candles into the middle.

6. Start arranging the greenery around the candles. I started at the edge, then filled in the centre. Remember to leave some space for the berries and pine cones!

Don’t put any into the sides or you won’t be able to get it into the lantern!

7. Push the berries into the oasis around the candles, then add the pine cones. You won’t need many berries and probably only 3-5 pine cones.

8. Drop some greenery into the bottom of the lantern and push it to the edges. This is to cover the sides of the oasis.

9. Carefully drop the arrangement into the lantern. If you’ve pushed the candles in quite far, you might be able to use them as a handle.

I found that I needed to remove the pine cones first, then I put them back in once the arrangement was inside the lantern.Just one word of warning: use a taper or another candle to light it or you will burn your fingers! Not only does this hurt, but burnt fingernail smells bad!

How to Sew Felt Birds

November 17, 2017 · Leave a Comment

How to Sew Felt Birds

My favourite Christmas decorating style is Scandinavian, and after a trip to Norway last year, I love it even more!

A couple of years ago I made some Scandi style felt birds as Christmas decorations. They’re the kind of thing that you can get away with leaving up even when it’s not Christmas, but the red is quite Christmassy. So I decided to make some similar birds in blue instead of red, and these I will be leaving up all year round!

Like the ones, the blue felt birds are made from felt. Gingham felt can be hard to find, but I bought all the felt for these birds, including the gingham, from Minerva Crafts. This is an affiliate link.

I sewed them together with the sewing machine, but being small, they could be sewn by hand.

Here’s the tutorial!

Felt Birds Tutorial

You Will Need

Blue felt, white felt, gingham felt, blue and white ribbon, tiny black buttons, wooden heart buttons.

Instructions

1. Cut 2 bird pieces from the blue felt, 2 from the white felt and 4 wings from the gingham felt. Before cutting the wings, fold the felt in half so that you have 2 wings facing one way and 2 facing the other.

2. Pin 1 wing to each bird body and sew in place.

3. Sew a heart button to the centre of each wing as shown on the picture.

4. Sew a tiny black button to the head of each bird piece.

5. Take the 2 blue body pieces and, with the wrong sides together, sew around the outside edge of the body. Repeat with the 2 white body pieces.

6. Sew a piece of ribbon to each bird for hanging.

I have kits available for these birds if you don’t want to faff about finding the supplies yourself. They’d also make nice gifts for people.

You might like the tutorial for the red felt Christmas birds.

I have kits for sale for the red birds too!

If you make some birds, I’d love to see! You can post them to the Tea and a Sewing Machine Facebook page!

Sewing To Hide an Eyesore

November 10, 2017 · 4 Comments

Sewing To Hide an Eyesore

You’ve probably seen that meme that says something like, “A clean house is a sign of a broken sewing machine”.

My house is usually a bit of a mess, and my sewing machine works just fine, so perhaps there’s some truth in this! But I don’t believe that it’s all down to having a fully functioning sewing machine. It’s also due to the fact that there are 6 messy people living in quite a small house.

In an effort to get the mess under control, we have had several deliveries from Ikea and I am usually in the middle of a sort out.

One of the recent deliveries included a new shoe rack. 6 people means a lot of shoes, especially in my husband’s case. He seems to have 4 times as many as everybody else, me included!

The old shoe rack had 2 shelves and I was wedging the shoes into it, only to lose them under the piano.

The new one has 4 shelves, so a lot more room, but unfortunately it’s an eyesore.

When hubby put it together and put all the shoes on it, I wanted to cry. It was like we lived at a bowling alley with all the shoes in the shelves. I posted a picture in Instagram if you want to see how bad it was!

Anyway, I don’t like to feel defeated, and this kind of problem is usually solved by a little bit of ingenuity.

So I had a think and a poke around and now the hideous eyesore of shoes looks like this.

Much better!

I used a shelf I found upstairs, bought ages ago but never used, some stick on velcro and a couple of metres of pretty fabric.

This strategy will work for all kinds situations, so if you need to hide an eyesore, this may well work for you!

How to Hide an Eyesore

You Will Need

Fabric (something heavier is best, but you could always line it or use interfacing), a shelf, stick on velcro, paint (optional).

Making the Curtain

1. If you need to paint your shelf, do that first. I used some Annie Sloan chalk paint that I had left over from something else. It dries very quickly and doesn’t smell bad, but it will need waxing.

2. Cut your fabric to the right size. It will need to be wide enough to go around the shelf, plus seam allowance and a bit extra for pleats if you want them, and long enough to cover your eyesore.

You might need to sew several sections together. My fabric became the right size easily when I cut in half then sewed both halves together.

3. Hem the top, bottom and sides.

4. I added some pleats at the corners. You could miss out this stage if you don’t want pleats or don’t have time or enough fabric.

Line up the centre seam with the centre of the long edge of the shelf. Mark where the corners are with pins.

Line the sides up with the centre seam. Using where you’ve already pinned as a guide, pin where the front corners are.

Find the centre of the short edge of the shelf and match it up on the fabric with the midway point at the side between the corners. Using pins, mark the corners. Repeat for the other side.

This fabric between where you marked the corners is the extra you have to make the pleats.

Fold the fabric so that the corner pins are together and the right sides of the fabric are together. Squish the extra fabric flat. Sew the pleat in place. Repeat for the other pleats.

5. Take one piece of the velcro and stick it to the top edge of the curtain. It probably won’t stay stuck down, especially if you wash it, so sew the velcro to the fabric.

6. Stick the other half of the velcro to the edge of the shelf.

7. You’ll need to think about how you’re going to use your shelf. I thought about getting blocks of wood or square brackets and attaching them to the top of the shoe rack, but in the end I didn’t so the shelf is balanced on my trainers!

How To Make a Burlap Christmas Wreath

Plaited Burlap Christmas Wreath Tutorial

You Will Need

Making the Wreath

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How To Make Felt Poinsettias

How To Make Felt Poinsettias

You Will Need

Instructions

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Christmas Lantern Arrangement

Instructions For Making a Christmas Lantern Arrangement

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Making the Christmas Lantern Arrangement

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How to Sew Felt Birds

Felt Birds Tutorial

You Will Need

Instructions

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Sewing To Hide an Eyesore

How to Hide an Eyesore

You Will Need

Making the Curtain

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