The Rag Wreath: I blame Rachael.

Rachael made a wreath.  She has a habit of doing that.  This was a wreath that I loved.  I loved her colors.  I'm not a VT grad though.  I also knew that if I were to do the wreath, I had to do it with materials I had.  I would spring for the form, but if I couldn't do it with fabrics I had, then it couldn't be done.  Hubs and I promised each other to keep spending to an absolute minimum.

You'd be glad that I held up to my end of the bargain.

I started to go through the mass amount of fabric that I have left over from a business venture gone south.  I had some delightful fabric that I purchased and never really got to use.  I knew that it would be perfect for this project.  When I pulled it out, I saw a delicious pink that I could match up with another fabric that I had.  I feared that if I used too much pink, it wouldn't look fall but just, well, pink.  I got those colors out, loved them and knew that I needed just a bit more fall.  I went hunting through the mounds of ribbon left over from the same venture gone wrong and I found that I had a fresh bolt of gold grosgrain ribbon.  Here is what I used:

I texted Rachael and found out that she used an 18" form.  When I looked at the forms, I found that 18" would be far too big for my door.  I decided that I'd rock out the 14" form.  It's the same wire form that you find in her blog post of how-to on the rag wreath.  (I've linked to that post in my first sentence in this post.)

Rachael used 2" x 9" strips and knowing that my form was 4" less in diameter, I decided to cut that back by 2".  I also had to consider that the grosgrain I had was 7/8", so going with a full 2" width on the strip I feared would make the gold ribbon bits stick out like a sore thumb.  I opted to run with 1 1/2" wide strips instead.

I followed Rachael's instructions and my time frame was probably about the same.  I didn't have quite as much clean-up fluff left over, but we did enjoy a Little House marathon while tying the wreath together.

I should add that I didn't do the same pattern as Rachael did.  Now what fun would that be if I, as an artist, would actually follow directions?  What I did was 2 brown strips, 1 gold strip, 2 brown strips, 1 gold strip, 2 brown strips, then 1 pink strip.  I then repeated the pattern.

Here is the finished product:

It's not quite as full as Rachael's.  I like her fullness, but I also had to consider the width between the doors that I have.  I wanted to make the tie-on widths similar, so that cut down on fluff, too.  I would have loved to have the scalloped edging, but I didn't have that wheel for my cutter, so I opted to just cut with scissors.  We love it!  The best part of my brand new wreath?  It cost me a total of $1.86.  (Including tax, thankyouverymuch.)

A pretty wreath for fall.  :)

(It was pouring in a biblical fashion.  I was certain that Noah was making his way around the bend.  I would have stepped off the porch to take a better photo, but I didn't want to drown.)