Rag Wreath: Winter and Summer Edition

I realized that I didn't have the specific instructions I needed in my other posts.  Here are the two wreaths that I made this week.  My husband told me that he figured that they were de-stress projects.  Kind of.  :)

To start:
4 different types of fabric.  1/2 yard each of three.  Maybe 2/3 yard of a filler color.

How do I choose a fabric?
I generally have an anchor fabric or some type of color theme to go with.  In the case of my winter wreath, I knew that I wanted to go with grays and gray/blue.

I pull patterns that I find interesting.  Sure, the patterns below look whackadoodle together, but when you look at the wreath, it makes sense.  I try to have a dark, two middle tone and one light.

What size is the wreath?
I found a 12" "box wreath frame" at Joann Fabrics.  Works well for our size of door.

Cutting fabric:
Trim off the labeled end. Then fold your fabric so that you can cut the strips in one run instead of three.  Just remember to cut the ends so that you have 7" strips and not 14" strips.
7" strips
1 1/2" wide (in my case, the width of the ruler)

How many strips per ring?
There are 4 rings per wreath with 6 sections per ring.  I always start from the inside and work out.  There was one wreath that I did not have enough fabric (I've since figured that out) and I cut off the outer ring.  It's best to fix the goof like that from the outside than the inside.

Inside: 
8 strips per section
First interior ring:
9 strips per section
Second interior ring:
12 strips per section
Outer ring:
14-15 strips per section

Important to note:
Make certain to count the strips you have left before doing your final ring.  No matter how uniform we would love things to be, sometimes we are down a few strips.  This way you can take the number you have and divide them out by the remaining sections you have.  On the winter wreath, I ended up taking the darker fabric and using it as a double strip filler on the last ring.  You can't tell.  It was a lighter fabric and I had a lot of strips left.  Also, I needed to fill in a lil heavier than I had originally planned.

How to attach:
Well now, just go here and that'll tell you what you need to know.  Rachael did a nice demo on her link found in my fall wreath post.  My 4th of July wreath (the one I had to remove a ring from because a shortage of fabric) can be found here.

How to store:
Hang them on a hanger in the coat closet.

The Winter Wreath: 

Presently hanging on our door. 

The Beachy Colored Summer Wreath: 

Now go forth, check out your fabric scraps, orphaned bits and pieces, the Joann's remnants bins and sale fabric.  No need to pay an arm and a leg for the fabric.

I will caution that after 2 years of a harsh summer sun shining on my 4th of July wreath (I leave it up all summer,) the fabrics have faded some.  I'll give you a hint.  Just turn your wreath upside down and display it bottom side up!  That way, the faded sections hang down, the brighter sections are up and you can pull a bit more mileage out of your wreath.

Happy 4th of July!

The Valentine Rag Wreath

Take two fabrics that definitely don't go together in regard to theme.  (An Asian inspired fabric and cherries.)  Go for only color, cut into strips and voila!  A Valentine's wreath for all of $1.74.  Hooray! 

Never mind that I need to fluff a little at the top right, but from the back, you can see that everything is pretty tight to make it a really full wreath.  It took a few hours and a scant amount of materials.  It makes me happy.  A pink wreath on the door with snow all around.  Not a bad thing!  

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.)