Friday, December 18, 2009

Wreaths under 5 bucks in an hour


Yet another finished project to report. I wanted to make a couple of wreaths for my godmother. I made her a wreath when I was in grade school or junior high and she still hangs that thing on her front door every year. It is in perfect condition, but I don't want her to feel that she is obligated to hang that wreath year after year. I decided to give her some more options. First I made the felt rosette wreath above. I found the directions here, but my experience was completely opposite of the author of that tutorial. Here are the differences - She used a 12 inch Styrofoam form while I used a 10 inch. She spent 5-6$ on the felt alone at Jo-Ann while I spent less that $5 for all of the supplies at Jo-Ann with my coupons and the current items on sale. She made 286 circles while I probably made less than 50. It took her between 12-15 hours to complete her wreath while mine took less than an hour from start to finish. I did not have a problem with the pinning and there was no need for a thimble. Now, you may say that mine is not as lush and full as the one that she made, but I just wanted to demonstrate that it can be modified and as a result only take you an hour to make.
That wreath went so quickly that I decided to move onto wreath number 2. I found directions for making a fabric scrap wreath. There are various methods including using a Styrofoam form and sticking square scraps in with a stick, or the one I decided to try which uses a metal wreath form. You just tie the scraps around each tier of the form. I needed to figure out how to make it not so "country" looking because that is not my godmother. I decided to use some fabric remnants that I had purchased from Ikea. I used this fabric.

The problem was that I ran out before I was finished with the last loop. So, I just moves onto another black and white fabric remnant which was also from Ikea that I had in my stash.

The form was less than a dollar (again, Jo-Ann coupon) and the fabric which was already in my stash was only a couple of bucks. Again, this took about an hour or so if you use a rotary cutter to cut your strips.
I feel better now that I can offer several other options for that front door next holiday season.

2 comments:

ai said...

Oh my, I am impressed. I am sure your godmother will love them both! The fabric choice for the second one is perfect.

pupule said...

Hey Ai!
Oh,not very impressive. You can make them very easily. I lucked out with the fabric. I had no idea how it would turn out.