A few weeks ago a very talented lady called Serena posted a photo on Pat Sloans  facebook page of a beautiful wreath in autumn colours. Isn’t it stunning! Facebook went crazy for a few days as everyone wanted the pattern, unfortunately there was no pattern, she had just created it! Several days later and Serena had written the instructions and it is now available for free on Pat Sloans website.

I decided to make one for Christmas. I had quite a few Christmas fabrics in my stash, and a few more that would blend well with Christmas colours. I decided to change it slightly by adding fabric flowers at the bottom, I found the instructions for these on here. My original plan was to have a fabric bow on the top but when I made one it didn’t look right so I added more flowers. I’m not sure about the red ones at the top but they will suffice for this year!

It uses quite a lot of fabric, I think I made about 60 leaves, each one is made from a 6 1/2″ square, folded diagonally twice to make a triangle, then gathered by hand along the long edge. The flowers are made from 4 1/2″ circles folded in half and gathered along the raw edge. I backed them with a circle of felt and covered a button for the centre.

The base of the actual wreath is a polystyrene ring, I got mine on Leeds market for about £3. I bound it in 2 1/2″ strips of green cotton which blends in nicely although I have a horrible feeling it was the green cotton I was saving for a particular quilt!! Oh well…

The instructions tell you to glue the leaves on with a glue gun, I haven’t quite sussed out my glue gun yet so I decided to pin it, two pins per leaf. I was glad I did it this way as it did allow me to move things around and change my mind occasionally! I started at the top and worked my way round to the flowers, I thought it would be easier that way as each leaf just has to cover up the base of the last one. When I was a third of the way round I positioned the flowers and then started adding the leaves around it. I actually found it was easier to position the leaves by tucking them under the last one so I did the rest of the leaves that way.

I bought two reels of wire from Hobbycraft, a red one and a green one. I have lots of beads in my stash and one packet that worked particularly well was left over from one of my daughters Christmas presents years ago, they were lovely shades of red, green, gold, bronze and silver. I twisted one bead on the end and a little gold one half way down, I twisted it around a pencil for about 15 turns before adding beads at the other end. I could then tighten a loop around a pin in the middle to pin it in place.

I like to hang a wreath over the fireplace, in previous years its been a foliage wreath in an oasis, this looks lovely but has issues with drips on my clock and the wooden mantelpiece. My fabric wreath solves that problem and looks lovely and Christmassy too.

I’m linking up with Kathy for Slow Stitching Sunday and Super Mom No Cape for Vintage Embroidery Monday, why not have a look and see what everyone else has been creating.