Cozy Fall Wreath

I love fall. I love the colors, the leaves, the smells. I love blankets, cozy fall clothes, pumpkin patches, and in-between weather—temperatures that aren’t too hot or too cold. Just the other night I was on a walk and commented to my husband that it just felt like fall. Felt and smelled. I say bring it on!

I hadn’t made any new fall decorations in a while, so I’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming this year. I’ve come up with some ideas that I’m excited to share! I had the idea for this wreath in my head and it turned out just how I hoped. I think it captures the warmth and coziness I was going for.

Supplies:

wire wreath frame

yarn

string

felt in assorted colors

thread

needle

Note: The above picture shows the actual color of the yarn. Please excuse the differences in the pictures that follow. I promise it’s the same yarn and same wreath.

The only supply I had to buy this time was the yarn, and that’s what sparked the whole idea for this project. I envisioned a cozy sweater-like wreath, so I found the thickest, chunkiest yarn I could. Of the available colors, I liked the plum color the best. I had my pick of a lot of pretty colors though.

The size of my wreath was dictated by the wire wreath frame I already had, but you could make a wreath of any size. Wire wreath forms come in a bunch of sizes, and you can even find them at Dollar Tree. Mine is 20 inches, but I have no idea where it came from since that seems to be an uncommon size. I’m

I knew I wanted to make sunflowers for my wreath, so I used yellow and brown felt for those. Then I chose colors that I thought made sense for fall leaves.

Step 1

Cut 3 pieces of yarn and braid them. I completely guessed on the length of my yarn and ended up with enough to make two rings around the wreath form with some left over. You could always use multiple braids if your first one isn’t long enough, so don’t worry about that.

Step 2

Attach the braid to the wreath. To do this I first stuffed one knotted end of the braid through the outer ring of the wreath frame. Then I started working my way around the wreath, tying it to the form at every cross bar I came to. If you do so carefully, you can thread the string under the braid so that it isn’t visible at all from the top. When I circled back to the starting point, I made another loop next to the first one. When that loop was finished, I cut off the excess braid, re-knotted the end of it, and tucked it through the wreath form. This meant that one part of the wreath was a little bulky and funky looking, but that’s easy enough to cover up with the decorations.

Step 3

Create your decorations. For me, this meant making the sunflowers and then the leaves to surround them. The sunflowers were my favorite things to make. Check out this video to see how I did it, and see below for written instructions.

First thread your needle with thread to match the center of your sunflower (or not—you shouldn’t see it, so the color shouldn’t matter). You’ll want to have this ready to go soon. Then cut a piece of felt from the long side of your felt about 3/4” wide. Fold it in half lengthwise and start making snips in it along the whole length. Be careful not to cut any pieces off! My snips were a little less than 1/4” apart.

Once you’ve cut along the whole length, start rolling it up from one end. Be sure to keep it folded and keep it tightly rolled. When you’ve rolled it all up, stick the needle through all of the layers of felt to hold it together. Go back the other way to make sure. Then you can either tie it off, or if you have some thread left, keep the needle threaded and set the whole thing aside.

I did not use a pre-made template to make the petals; it just took me a couple of attempts at cutting to get a shape that I liked. I found that a petal height of about 3/4 the diameter of the center gave me some nice proportions for my flowers. Once I had petals I was happy with, I used one of them as a template to cut out the rest. I folded the yellow felt in half and cut through both layers so I could get two petals at a time. It makes this part go twice as fast!

Now you can start sewing on the petals. First sew on one ring of petals, and then go back and sew another ring in between the first ones. Because these flowers were for a wreath and not something that will be messed with a lot, I just did one stitch per petal. It made the flower making go quickly and seems plenty secure.

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To make the leaves, I first drew some on a piece of scrap paper and then cut them out to make my templates. Honestly, had my printer been working I most likely would have printed out some templates. Just doing a quick search I found a bunch of images online. I think I did okay though. I used an ultra fine tip permanent marker to trace the leaves onto different colors of felt, and then cut them out. Because I made 5 sunflowers, I cut out 10 green leaves and 6 of each of other colors. That gave me the layout I was looking for.

After I’d cut out all of the leaves, I laid everything out on the wreath and felt like something didn’t look quite right. I decided the leaves needed veins, so I used a needle and thread and sewed some on using thread colors that matched the felt as closely as possible. There were so many leaves that I knew I’d lose patience with all the stitching, so my stitches are big. I also didn’t get too detailed, but I think it makes a difference.

Step 4

Attach the decorations to the wreath. I used a needle and thread and simply sewed everything onto the wreath. I started with a leaf cluster at one end and placed things as I went until I was happy with the way it looked. Do take into consideration any parts of the wreath you want to cover up as you’re laying things out though.

Variations:

Don’t like sunflowers? Try a different kind of flower! There are lots of pretty fall flowers you could make. If you like the shape of the sunflower but not the colors, you could make orange ones instead. Or red… or whatever.

If you’re not up to making leaves and flowers to decorate your wreath with, you could always decorate with faux flowers from the craft store. I love browsing the floral department because there are so many pretty options these days.

You could always forget the flowers and leaves! What says FALL to you? You could even spell out the word ‘fall’ or ‘autumn.’

Whatever you do, have fun with it!