How to make your own homemade rag wreath….

I think we’ve established over the years here that I am NOT a natural crafter and no matter how much effort I put in to something, the finished result very rarely ends up looking like it did in my head before I started.

That’s generally the reason why I stay away from crafts that will be on display for people to see when they come to my house.  And then, a couple of weeks ago, I was shopping the other week looking at the pretty fabrics imagining the disasters works of art that I could produce with it when the nice young man brought out a stack of wire wreath rings and my mind started working overtime.

I remembered looking at an article in a magazine somewhere where some cleaver crafty person made it look super simple to make a beautiful rag wreath using one of these rings and some scraps of paper.  I tried to talk myself out of it but I ended up walking away with 3 rings from Joanns (I’m nothing if not ambitious) and some of the pretty fabric I was in love with.

Then I got home and couldn’t find the article I’d read anywhere so I had to wing it which meant that the beautiful homemade rag wreath that I’d imagined hanging on my hall wall was destined for disaster before I’d even started.

Here’s how I got on….

I started by cutting my fabric into strips about six inches long and about an inch wide – it doesn’t have to be perfectly neat and you don’t have to use different colours like I did.  All I would say is that the fabric I got was quite thin and prone to fraying which is not a huge problem but if I made it again, I would choose a thicker fabric.

I chose four colours to make my homemade rag wreath and to make sure the colours were evenly distributes throughout the wreath I just put them all in piles and got a system going – I just kept repeating ‘pink,blue, yellow, green, multi’ over and over again as I was making it. 😉

All you need to do when you have your colour strips ready to go is just simply knot a fabric strip around the wreath.  Just like this one:

When you’ve knotted your first one on to the wire ring you can add your next one and so on, just keep pushing them as close together as you can before you add the next one.

When there’s no space left to knot on any more fabric you can give it a good fluff up and push as much of the fabric to the front as you can.  Finally, I just used a piece of cream ribbon knotted around it as a wall hanger but you could use an extra long strip of  fabric if you prefer.

The finished result is really effective, even using fabric that looks frayed and even with my limited craft skills.

I love the end result and for once, it really does look (almost) as good as I pictured it in my head.  I’ve hung it in my hall and I’ve had so many compliments on it that I definitely think we can class this homemade rag wreath as a success!

I’m going to make a red and green version for christmas with just a little bit of gold ribbon knotted in occasionally!

A homemade rag wreath is a great craft for the un-crafty like me and it’s a great thrifty gift to make and give someone.  You can match it to your colour scheme or you can even use some old clothes – maybe some of the kids clothes you don’t want to part with.

I bought my wire wreath ring from Hobbycraft for a pound but there’s plenty on Amazon here if you don’t have a Hobbycraft near you.

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