Wreath tutorial

This year, we are holding Thanksgiving at my home. As a college kid who commutes to school daily, I still live at home, so when my Mom found out, I was the chosen child to help plan for everyone coming over. I was probably more excited than any kid my age would be.

I quickly jumped on Pinterest and started researching side dishes, desserts, crafts, anything thanksgiving themed.

Once we got the menu down and how we wanted the layout for the dinner (we have a small ranch home, 2 bedrooms 1 bath) I opened my mouth with excitement once again and said I would do the decorating too.

I decided to make this wreath. I had no directions at all, I just winged it, and I'm so proud of it. Here is the full tutorial (with pictures for us visual folks!) so you can make this for your home:

This is what you will need to complete the first portion of this wreath...I went to Michaels and filled my cart, I didn't even know Michaels had carts but I'm so grateful they did.

I just chose a fall color scheme with hints of red. I really wanted to create something that could live on the front door for all of fall. Next year I will be able to bring it out sooner. This next part took me about an hour and half to complete. I just put on a movie and started...

I chose to wrap the Styrofoam wreath with the brown yarn and introduce the red yarn later on. With my thumb I held down the previous wrapped area and with my right hand I took the yarn and just wrapped it around, I tried to make sure the tension was the same all the way through. 

I found it easier to cut a small portion of the yarn ball it up in my right hand and wrap that way. At first trying to get all the yarn through the wreath was tough. Once I figured that out I was flying along. That is until my yarn ball ran out...

Then I just cut more yarn ( I just pulled from the original yarn ball, usually counted to a double digit number as I pulled to guarantee I had enough slack) and took the old end and tied it to the new end. I then camoflauged the knots when I wrapped around that area. The styrofoam helped a bit and grabbed the fibers from the yarn so I didn't have to worry about it sticking out. 

An hour and a half later I flipped it over and had a perfectly yarn wrapped wreath. At this point it was midnight so I decided as much as I loved my new wreath sleep was much more important. Quick tip: When deciding between sleep and a wreath, always choose sleep. Sleep is always good. The wreath will be there in the morning.

So the next morning I took out my round two of supplies

You probably wouldn't need the cutting board but I was sitting on my living room floor, so the cutting board was needed. I decided to just use some left over card stock to use as a template and see if the size I cut out would fit my wreath. I was going for an argyle pattern, so squares was the name of the game. 

2" x 2.5" worked out well for the vision I had... with that I introduce the felt

I then layered all the felt together, took my template and figured I would need about 12 squares, so 4 per piece of felt. I drew on the top piece of felt and just cut the squares out.

I had 12 total squares now...then I took out my wreath and placed the squares around the wreath making sure no like colors were next to one another, that is until I got to the end and realized I needed an open space for my leaves and decorations

I then took my hot glue gun and started to glue down my felt pieces making sure to get enough glue to keep it secure over the long haul

Then just pat down your squares to make sure they stick as you go

The next thing I did was bring out my red yarn and started to pull it out and cut a small amount of yarn since I only needed it to go around twice

On the back side I just tied it and glued the red yarn to the brown yarn so it would stay, and made sure as I went the tension was the same.

Once I finished going around the one way, I started the other way and made sure the red yarn crossed over each other to make an "X" over the pieces of felt...

This is what it looked like when I was all done with my yarn wrapping

It's really pretty as is and if you wanted you could just stop there, but I knew what I wanted to complete it would make this already pretty looking wreath look gorgeous. 

I just ripped apart some fall garland I purchased, taking one berry cluster and some leaves from one and some flowers from a fall bouquet. With that I just stuck them into the wreath 

I made sure to hot glue the leaves and flowers to the wreath to secure them down 

then I added the finishing touch, the berry cluster and then hung it on my front door. Doesn't it just say "Happy Thanksgiving!" to you? No, just me then? Oh well I love it...