Christmas Wreath

I had a revelation some time ago. Some of the Stitch and Bitch ladies had decided that patchwork and all things sewing machine related were the way forward and discussions were apace. I felt massively out of the loop and tentatively asked the question, "Yeah but where do you get your fabric from?"

Judging by the looks on the faces I had missed out on some valuable life lesson.
Apparently I should have been squirreling away pieces of fabric my whole life - old clothes, picking things up in charity shops. Why did I not know this?! What terrible upbringing have I had that meant I missed the memo on creating a stash of fabric? I wholeheartedly lay the blame on my Mother's doorstep and I have chastised her accordingly.

I decided patchwork was well beyond the realms of capacity given that,

a) I didn't have any fabric and no money to buy any

b) Sewing machines scare the crap out of me

so I put it to the back of my mind and stayed firmly in the land of cross stitch and crochet where I knew I was safe.

But then at the Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate I was faced with an overwhelming amount of fabric (in fact the whole thing was pretty fabric, not amazing if you're not a fabric person like me) and thought I might as well throw myself into the fray. I purchased a couple of fat quarters to start off my little stash and then came across some Christmas fabric.

And I mean proper Christmas fabric, nothing trendy and modern, full on, traditional Christmas fabric. And I remembered that one of The Stitchettes had said something about people bringing Christmas fabric to her house and something about making wreaths and so I took the plunge.

Apologies for the very bizarre red tinge to this photograph - when will we see the sun again?!

Time and life got in the way of me finding out about this Christmas Wreathing, not to mention monumental craft guilt that I should be focussed on Mum's blanket and not on frivolous Christmas decorations, but eventually I got my tutorial.

It was all quite simple really, cut the fabric into strips about 1 inch wide and 6 inches long and then tie in a knot around the metal frame.

Now. A word of warning - at the beginning, it looks terrible and you will want to give up. You have to stick with it and just keep on going, keep all the fabric bunched up as tight as you can together and it will gradually begin to take form. Thank the lord I had Chief Stitchette on hand to help me and encourage me to keep going or I would have long given it up as a bad job.

And you keep tying and you keep smooshing and you keep fluffing and eventually you end up with something like this:

At this point I have to apologise because I have tried and I have tried and I have tried to get a good photograph of this wreath but have decided it's actually impossible. For some strange reason, they don't appear to photograph well at all and just come out looking like horrible messes. You might need to take me at my word with this one, these wreathes do look good. Promises.

See. I even took a photo with the horrible flash on in an attempt to get a good picture but without luck!

I was more than a little bit pleased when I got Mum's blanket finished on Sunday as this meant I was free to craft whatever I damn well pleased and Productive Sunday was rounded off with the finishing of this bad boy, who is now hanging on my bedroom door, being generally festive.

Detail

I am definitely going to be on the lookout to do this again, there are a few people with birthdays near Christmas who I think would appreciate a bit of Christmas wreath action. And it took, at most, a few hours to complete. It does take up quite a bit of fabric - I had just enough to complete mine and that was 5 fat quarters - some of the other Stitchettes used fleece-type fabric which is obviously much bulkier so wouldn't need as much.

I am feeling the warm glow of smugness pride that comes with making my first ever Christmas-type decoration and in a way I'm looking forward to putting him to bed once Christmas is over, only to rediscover him in December 2011.