Spring Wreath Tutorial

I am not a big fan of making wreaths. I obsess about every little detail and end up driving myself crazy. However, I saw several "rag wreaths" on Pinterest and thought they looked easy and not too detail oriented. Once I decided to make a "rag wreath", I could not find a good tutorial. So I decided to dive in and take as many pictures as possible to pass along.

I do like wreaths to be large for the front door. Smaller wreaths seem to get swallowed up. We recently repainted our front door and decided to stay with a white door. This way I wouldn't have to worry about seasonal wreaths clashing with the color.

I started with a 16" 8 section wire wreath. Since I had no idea of how much fabric to purchase I decided on 4 yards. I figured if I had fabric leftover I could make a pillow or something. I spent quite some time at Jo-Ann's deciding on the fabric. I wanted something spring-like and that wouldn't be a huge contrast to the interior of our home.

Usually the first step in any project with fabric is to wash it first to remove the sizing. Since this fabric will not be washed or wore, you can skip this step. I ironed the fabric before cutting into strips so any wrinkles would not get in the way of my "precise" measurements. Looking back I could probably have skipped this step.

Using scrap pieces of fabric I tried several different lengths and widths until I decided on 1" wide and 8" long. You could go wider than 1" and you won't need as many strips. Any shorter than 7" to 8" and the fabric will be hard to tie. Go ahead and notch the fabric and tear. The edges will fray a little but that's what you want.

The total width of your fabric will determine how many strips you can get out of it. I made the strips a yard or so at a time. I didn't want to end up with more strips than I needed.

Okay time to get tying. Just start one section at a time making sure to alternate between the two fabrics. I double knotted each strip. This took me two afternoons. Not too bad considering how much tying I had to do.

Back view of first section

Front view of first section

For my 8 section wire wreath I used

-26 strips for the outer section

-24 strips for the 2nd section

-20 strips for the 3rd section

-18 strips for the inner section

Before fluffing

Agatha - Wreath Inspector

Make sure you fluff up your wreath

Turns out 4 yards was just enough. I have a small scrap of the floral fabric leftover. I am planning to make a sachet out of it filled with lavender from our garden.