Wednesday 15 December 2010

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.

12 comments:

  1. ooh it is getting awfully festive round these blog parts. Christmas pressies, christmas fabric, christmas decorations!

    I love wreaths (I don't have one for fear of drunk passersby removing it from my front door to use as a festive Frisbee). Yours is great and hopefully the first step on the slippery slope towards fabric and sewing and all that entails...

    ReplyDelete
  2. oh dear, you have strayed into the world of fabric now. You will have even less budget for your primary crafts, and less space to store you yarny stash. But you will find a very pretty pile of fabric strangely appealing even if you never stitch anything with it! I find that fabric makes very pretty purse and bag linings though - just a suggestion.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love your groovy wreath! Have a look on Flickr, there were loads of good ideas for this kind of thing last year.
    Oh, and get thee to Sew Mama Sew (http://sewmamasew.com/blog2/) where there is a massive giveaway and you can win fabric for free! Yipee!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow, that looks brilliant! I've been looking for a wreath but most of the ones I see in the shops seem to look a bit cheap somehow - I think fabric is the way forward!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dude! That looks awesome! I'm super impressed! I'm jealous of all your craft skillz.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm relatively new to Fabric Stashing I have to admit, but it's addictive!

    Your wreath is brilliant, definitely one to put on the 'to do next year' list!

    Feeling your lack of natural light pain too, yuk!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Look brilliant hon.
    Just one question what are you tying the bits of material on to? :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Well, there is no hope now you have discovered FABRIC and been initiated into the art of looking at items in charity shops, not to wear, but to cut up for patchwork, knitted items to felt etc.
    The wreath is lovely, and I am going to filch the idea for next year... which means if I don't do it now, which I won't, then I will have forgotten all about it by then!

    ReplyDelete
  9. What a simple, but effective idea. I'm very impressed.

    ReplyDelete
  10. It looks really cool - although i'm not sure i could get myself to make one, it just eats up so much nice fabric!!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. We did this at school when I was 8 - but with strips of white bin bag! Worked a treat! Love this! xxx

    ReplyDelete
  12. Though - where did you get the metal frame? We used old coat hangers bended into shape...

    ReplyDelete

Go on. Say something. You know you want to...