Autumn Wreath

The weather has turned cold and wet, and our trees are finally starting to change colors. Yes, autumn has arrived! To celebrate the change of season, I was inspired to make a seasonal wreath as soon as I spotted this wreath on Etsy. Success:



Here are some instructions in case you want to make your own:

• First, I bought a plain straw wreath. They're available at most craft stores; this one cost less than $4.
• Next, I covered it with scraps of muslin, left from a previous project, using some standard craft glue.
• While the glue was drying, I ripped fabric into strips roughly 2 inches wide. As you can see, I started with eight fabrics, but I ended up using only four of them to make the wreath look less cluttered. In the future, I would use just a few colors, in more narrow strips, and maybe add ribbon to the mix. The inspiration wreath used wool, but I used simple cotton quilting fabric.
• To make the design, I tied the strips around the wreath in a repeating pattern. I bought 1/3 of a yard of each fabric. Even though I only used half of the width of fabric, I'd buy a lightly longer piece in the future so that I could double-knot each piece. Although I figured out how to get the ribbon effect shown in the inspiration wreath, I didn't do it on my wreath because the ribbon I bought matched the strips of fabric I discarded but not the ones I adopted for the wreath.
  
• Finally, I trimmed the ends of the fabric on the back and hung the wreath on the door with a piece of ribbon.

Happy Fall!