Making a Festive Fabric Wreath

When I walk in my front door, one of the first things I see is this wreath, hung on the back of the living room door.  I made it a two or three years ago, out of some scraps of fabric that needed using up, from an article I found in Prima Makes magazine I think.  I like it, hence why it's hung there for over two years now and I have had positive comments about it from some visitors.

On Friday, I was feeling a bit creative and decided I'd like to make another one, but with a more festive/autumn/winter feel.  I did try making a Christmas wreath in a previous year, with scraps of Christmas fabric, but it didn't look right, so I gave up.  The fabric was a bit thin and it didn't look substantial enough.

Anyway, this time around, to give it a cosy autumn/winter feel, I decided to make it with wool fabric scraps, of which I have a ton, thanks to appropriating a bag of scrap wool samples a couple of years ago that were being skipped at a local fabric warehouse.  I'd been promising myself that I would use these, but haven't really done much with them so far, so it seemed a good opportunity to do so.  I also had a number of Fairisle/lambswool sweaters and scarves that had been attacked by moths or shrunk in the wash and I'd ended up felting them and keeping them, so I decided to use these too, plus some plain sheets of felt from my stash.

I began by acquiring a wire coat hanger from the wardrobe, untwisted the wires and made them into a circle, by twisting the wires around one another.  I then proceeded to cut up strips of wool fabric (about 6-8 inches long) and tie them to the wire, all around the hanger, repeating the sequence of each particular fabric.

It doesn't take too long to do this project and within a couple of hours I'd finished.  I tied a green ribbon around it and it was ready to hang. I did trim the ends of some of the bows to make it look a little tidier.  The trick is to squeeze as much fabric onto the wreath as possible to make it look as full and substantial as possible

I was pretty pleased with the results and it will replace the current one come December, as part of my festive decorations. Here's a picture of the finished wreath, I think I like it better than the original one.