Thursday, March 7, 2013

St. Patty's Day Burlap & Fabric Scrap Wreath {Tutorial}


Last week I mentioned that I loved to decorate for St. Patricks Day. Well, for those of you who follow along, you also know that I love to make wreaths. I make one for every holiday. I even have a special place in my house that gets the 'new' wreath almost every month. So I couldn't not make a wreath for St. Patricks Day, right? Obviously not, so here is what I came up with!

While browsing I found my inspiration from this cute wreath. You can see it here. This wreath uses burlap and fabric scraps and I just so happen to have a ton of burlap just sitting around, so I decided to make a burlap and fabric scrap wreath of my own.

Making this wreath cost me next to nothing. Like I said before, I had the burlap sitting around and I know that I had bought it at JoAnn's while it was on a 50% off sale. The fabric was also incredibly cheap because with it already being March, Hobby Lobby had it on for 50% off as well. I used buttons from my ever growing collection, so the only other thing  I had to buy was the wreath form. But, at 40% off of $3.99, it hardly even counts. ;-) Including all of my supplies, this wreath cost me under $10.00!!




Can't Get Started Without:
~Wreath form ( I used a straw one and left the plastic on it)
~Co-ordinating fabrics of your choice (I chose to pick 4 different ones, but you can use as many or as few as you'd like)
~Burlap
~Glue gun and glue sticks
~Yarn
~A good pair of sewing scissors (if you have good scissors, it speeds up the process)
~Marker
~Buttons









The first step is to find a shamrock shape that you like, as you will be using this for your stencil. I found mine on my silhouette and cut it onto some heavy cardstock. I then took all of my fabrics and my burlap and traced my shamrocks onto all of the material. For my circles, I used a cup and traced around it.


I found that I needed a lot more circles than I originally cut and a lot fewer shamrocks. ( I now have a ton of fabric shamrocks hanging around that I need to find something to do with).

 
After all of the tracing I began the cutting. Both of these steps are really easy to do, but quite time consuming. Make sure you have a good TV show on while you're doing them to help with the monotany. :)


Once you have all of your pieces cut out, it is time to get glueing. I started with my circles and just glued them all over the wreath form to cover the plastic.  There was no rhyme or reason to my placement, I just used whatever piece I picked up. I was a tiny bit nervous at this point because the under layer of the wreath just isn't that pretty, but I kept on trucking and am quite happy with the finished product.

 
When your wreath is fully covered, take a piece of yarn/string/twine and tie it loosley around the wreath. This will be what you hang the wreath from, so don't make it too long.

As you can see, I didn't cover the back of the wreath to save myself some time and fabric. :)
 
Now it's time to get creative. Take your circles and start glueing them wherever suits your fancy. I was a little more careful in my placement for this layer because I wanted to make sure I spread out the different fabrics. I also only glued the middle of the circles so the edges would be floppy. It gives the wreath a fuller, messier look (which I love).

 
Once you are satisifed with your circles, take your shamrocks and glue them randomly to the middle of the circles. Again, you can choose to glue as many or as few shamrocks as you like. I ended up making mine have a bit of a pattern on the front. They kind of just circle the wreath.

 
And now, time for the buttons! I was so excited for this part as I love buttons. I really think they are the cutest things. I also happen to have a ton of them from all of my crocheting, so I picked through my collection and found some coordinating ones to glue on. I just placed them randomly wherever I thought they fit best.

 
At this point I thought my wreath was done. But, after hanging it up I felt like there was something missing...


I decided to make a mini pennant (because who doesn't love pennants) for the middle. All I did was cut out some little triangles and with a green marker wrote 'Happy Go Lucky'. I then glued each piece to some yarn (that I had previously measured to the wreath). I glued on a few more buttons and attached it to the wreath with, you guessed it, more glue and voila! It was a great finishing touch. I think it added that certain 'missing' element.

 
I think this wreath turned out great. It was incredibly simple and I got to use a lot of the extra supplies that I have lying around.
 
 
Have you ever made any 'scrap' wreaths? I would love to see them!
 

Happily linking up with these fantastic parties:

button
made in a day
HookingupwithHoH
The Taylor House
Photobucket
 
 
 












1 comment:

  1. What a cute wreath and great tutorial. Shared it on google+ and pinned,
    Wanda Ann @ Memories by the Mile

    ReplyDelete