St. Patty Day Inspired Wreath

I wanted to make a St. Patty's day wreath but wanted something that could possibly go into spring.  I love the natural look of the "haystack" wreath and I thought it would look great with the shredded fabric flowers that I saw on this tutorial at BCheniful 's Blog.

Click on the READ MORE>>> to see how I made the fabric flowers and  put this together

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 Supplies:

• 1 wreath of decent size.  I prefer the look of the haystack but you could also use a normal wreath wrapped in sweater material or the bleached vine looking wreaths
• A couple of fat quarters in your preferred pattern ( I used 3 fat quarters and cream scraps)
• Buttons(optional)
• Hot glue gun or craft glue
• Decorative element (in this case, the shamrock)

Making the Flowers---

Now - I liked the tutorial that I mentioned above as a guide, I found a way to make them a little bit easier for the more novice fabric wrapping person -- like yours truly!

I took some pics of the progress along the way and a very poor, unedited, literally smokin' hot (high temp glue gun) video

Warning: I used a high temp glue gun and burned the heck out of my one finger... 

Take a square of fabric that coordinates and cut it to about the size that you would like to have the flower's diameter.  In this case 2x2 inches.  This square will become the back of the flower.  Cut two strips of fabric 1.5 inches wide by the length of the fat quarter (so about 40 inches long) and heat up that hot glue gun.

Tie a not near the end of 1 strip of fabric

Place a glop of glue on the square of fabric 

adhere the tag end of the strip to the square fabric.  Place another glop of hot glue and fold the knot over.

 Fold the fabric in half .














Begin twisting the folded strip of fabric around the knot.  Hot gluing as you continue around the growing circle of fabric.

Once you are nearly finished wrapping the strip of fabric you can add on another strip and continue the same process to make a larger fabric or stop at this point by trimming off the excess square fabric

 Glue the remaining tail of fabric to the underside of the flower.

You are left with a delicate hand-wound fabric flower that is ready to stick on a wreath or make its mark on a hair-pin.

You can continue making coordinating flowers in the colors of your choice.  In this particular wreath I used 3 different fat quarters for the patter variation and one piece of scrap material that was left over from the Menu sign that I made last week.

After the flowers were made, I tied my decorative shamrock onto three sctrips of matching fabric.  Then, tied that onto the wreath.   I decided to go this route because I hope to utlize this wreath through spring and want to have the option to remove the shamrock come March 18th.

Using my glue gun, I added the flowers to the wreath.

I then decided to add a few buttons to give it a little bit of charm and have the buttons act as "centers" of the flowers.

The end result was a happy little wreath hanging on our already green door.  It was freezing when I took this picture.  I am eager to have spring in Colorado!

 Think spring... Think spring... Think spring...

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