Yarn wreath

As I wrote in my last post, I bought the largest balls of yarn ever. SO, now I have to find projects to do with them. If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

So, in addition to the baby hats, I decided to usher in spring with a spring yarn wreath, based on this fantastic tutorial. Found on Pintrest, of course.




Now, I am married and such, so I went with more neutral colors instead of pink and lacy. Instead, I used green yarn, a yellow cotton fabric, and burlap. Yep, burlap.





Here's what I used for my wreath:
- 1 foam wreath form
- yarn
- at least two different fabrics
- pearl-headed pins (you need as many pins as you have flowers, and maybe a couple more to help secure the flowers to the wreath form)

Fancy people actually -sew- their flowers. I, however, couldn't find my needle and thread, and got lazy, sooo... I just used pins, instead. Definitely not as secure as actually sewing, but hopefully the wreath won't see much abuse and will hold up. Thus far it's doing well.

Directions:

1. Wind the yarn around the wreath form. The other tutorial tells you to cut lengths of yarn to do this. Again, I'm lazy, folks. I didn't want the extra steps of cutting the yarn and then knotting it in the back every couple inches. Instead, I just rolled my yarn into a ball and passed it through the yarn form continuously. Now, the outer diameter is larger than the inner diameter (obviously), so it will take more yarn to cover the outer portion of the wreath than the inner, so you'll have to make layers of yarn along the inner side of the wreath so that the outer edge of the wreath can be covered. This is not rocket science, I'm sure you'll figure it out.


Wrapping the wreath took -forever-. Make sure you set aside enough time. I did it while Mr. A and I watched a movie together (Elizabeth). All in all, it took me about 2-2 1/2 hours to complete this stage.

2. Tie the two ends of the yarn into a knot so that it doesn't come undone. Fairly obvious, I know, but it must be said. Here's the knot and a picture of the wreath form fully covered:













3. Now comes the making of the flowers. I used two different types of flowers. One requires strips of fabric, the other requires circles of fabric.

a. Flower #1, using strips of fabric.
- Cut strips of fabric (I used the burlap for these flowers) anywhere from 1/2" to 1 1/2" thick. The thicker the strip of fabric, the bigger the flower. Also, the thicker you cut the strip, the longer the strip should be, too. For a fairly thin strip, the fabric strip should be about 7" long.


- Take the fabric and pleat one of the long sides, making sure that each pleat is on top of the last, forming the flower shape.

- Once you have finished the round, you don't want the rough edge facing out, so tuck the rough edge under your last pleat, putting the corner in the center.

- Take one of your trust pins and stick it straight through the center of the flower. If you have done your pleating well, it should go through ever layer, securing them all in place. If you are a particularly fancy person, you could probably sew this. If you'd prefer to do that, see the other tutorial (mine's for lazy people like me).

- The pin will then stick directly into the wreath form. If it needs some extra securing, you can always add a few pins in inconspicuous places.

b. Flower #2, using circles of fabric.

- Cut circles of fabric out of your other type of fabric. I used my yellow cotton for this one. The circles should be about 1-2" in diameter.

- Fold each circle in half, then layer them like you would shut a box, one side of each half-circle above the one next to it, the other under, so that the semi-circles are woven together into one whole circle.

- Fold the new circle in half, and then in half again, forming a kind of triangle. Take a pin and push it through at the point of the triangle, making sure you push it through each layer.

- Stick the pin into wreath form.

I made three of the pleated flowers and two of the circle flowers to create my wreath.


Have fun!