Monday, June 20, 2011

A Wreath for the Fourth (and a State Fair Ribbon)!

I love all things patriotic!  I love the music!  I love the picnics!  I love the fireworks!  And I love, Love, LOVE all of the red, white, and blue decorations!  Buntings, pennants, streamers, garlands...LOVE THEM!

I have wanted a fun patriotic wreath for my front door for a while.  I finally came up with this:

I LOVE it!

I used the same general design to make this wreath that I used to make my spring Flower Power Wreath.  To see the tutorial for the wreath click here.  In this post I will only show the steps for making the rosette wreath hanger.   (It can also make a cutie, cute hair bow holder just like this.)

Of course you don't have to hang a hair bow holder on your front door!

Here are the materials that you need to make this rosette...


  • 3 yards - 3" wide double faced satin ribbon
  • 12" - 1/2"  grosgrain ruffled ribbon
  • cardboard
  • a few cotton balls or batting
  • 12" of beading wire (not pictured)
  • a compass
  • a ruler
  • straight pins
  • hot glue



I have a cute little helper!
First, use the compass to draw the circle for the center of your rosette.  Then do some simple geometry to find the length to make your ruffle to go around the outside of your rosette.  ( C equals Pi times d) found here.  Cut a second circle with a diameter 1" larger than the center circle.  

The diameter of my circle is 2.25" so I need at least 7.065" of ruffle.
Spread out a cotton ball to cover the top of the circle.  This is to give the center of your rosette a  raised quality.  I needed one cotton ball, but I used an extra large one.  You might need a few more if your cotton balls are small.  A small bit of batting will also work. Cut a piece of ribbon long enough to cover the circle. 
Trim the cotton from the edge of the circle.

Spread out your cotton ball. 
Place the ribbon on top of the cotton.  Fold the ribbon over the edge of the cardboard and secure with hot glue.  

Put the ribbon on top of the cotton. 
Hot glue the edges.

I glued the compass points first -  top, bottom, left, right.  Then I filled in around the rest of the circle.  
Glue down the edges.
The circle has a bit of dimension. 

The back of the circle.

The front of the circle. 


















Some nifty sewing machines have special feet designed to make a ruffle for you.  If you have a machine that will do that, by all means.  DO IT!  I haven't such a machine so I had to ruffle myself.  I did not want to merely gather the ribbon to create a ruffle.  I wanted a measured even ruffle.  I achieved this by carefully measuring and pinning along the length of ribbon until I reached my desired length of ruffle  (7.065").

I didn't get any pictures of this process, but I measured down 1" and then folded it in half and pinned it at 1/2".  I repeated this process aligning the front of each fold with the back of the previous fold.

Here is the ruffle all pinned and ready to glue. 
From here the process went very quickly.  I used hot glue to secure the folds of the ruffle, but I considered hauling out my sewing machine.  In the end, the glue gun won.  I put a dab of glue in each fold to secure the ruffle shape.


Dab and squeeze!
Now all that is left is the final assembly.

Glue the white ruffled ribbon around the edge of the center circle.










Draw a guide circle with a diameter 1" smaller than the center rosette circle.  Glue the ribbon ruffle to the second cardboard circle using this smallest circle as the guide.  Again I glued the compass points and filled in the rest of the ruffle from there. 

Gluing on the ruffle. 

The back of the ruffle.
The front of the ruffle (plus my helper).










Glue the front of the rosette to the ruffle.  Then double the remaining ribbon to make the streamers.  Use the beading wire to make a hanger for the wreath.  Secure the hanger with hot glue.  Glue the hanger and streamers to the back of the ruffle.

Form a circle.
Wrap and twist.


Attach the hanger to the ruffle.
Glue in the hanger.


















Trim the ends of the streamers to prevent fraying.

Any fancy cut will do!
Stop here if you are making a hair bow holder.  Continue on if you are making the full wreath.

Here are your materials to complete the full wreath:
  • 18" wicker wreath
  • 60 fabric "flowers"  
  • ribbon wreath hanger
  • hot glue
For this wreath I used cardboard for the patterns instead of craft foam.  I liked it!  I also used pinking shears for the large and small circles and only used scissors to cut the center star shapes. 



Lay the ribbon out behind an 18" wicker wreath.  Secure the ribbon to the back of the wicker wreath with a generous amount of hot glue.


Then glue on the fabric flowers around the wreath following the directions found here.  This wreath did not use "leaves" in its design so the "flowers" did not reach around to the back of the wreath as well.

Here is the finished wreath hanging on my front door.  Did I tell you before I LOVE IT?  No?  Well, I do!

Here is the full wreath.  It is hanging from the door using Command hooks.

Top detail.  I love the red right at the top. 

Left side detail.

Right side detail.

Bottom detail.

The full wreath again.
My kids love this wreath, but my husband had some interesting observations.

First of all, whenever I ask his opinion on anything craft related.  His response is, "I'm a dude!"  His description of this wreath was slightly more wordy.  He thinks the ribbon is out of place because, and I quote, "it looks like something that should be hanging from the pen of a sate fair cow!"  How can I combat that?  He's right!  A state fair cow would look mighty nice with my ribbon pinned onto his or her pen.  I still think it looks mighty nice holding my wreath to the door.  :) 

Here is one last shot!

Did I mention, I love it!

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19 comments:

Sallie said...

Such a cute wreath! I love the blue ribbon. What really impresses me is the math! LOL.

Jill said...

lovely bright wreath!!

Thanks for linking to a Round Tuit!
Hope you have a great week!
Jill @ Creating my way to Success
http://www.jembellish.blogspot.com/

Ashley said...

love the wreath. :)

Sanghamitra Bhattacherjee(Mukherjee) said...

Just loved the wreath! So cute! You are very creative!
Hope to see you on my blog:)

Dr Sonia S V said...

What a wonderful project and it looks all the more lovely after you showed how to make it. I think a project looks more lovely if you understand all the hard work that went in to making it.
Thank You for dropping by my blog
Cheers from Bangalore ,India
Dr Sonia S V
http://cardsandschoolprojects.blogspot.com

CREATIVE KHADIJA said...

How nice!!thanks for the tutorial :)

Whit said...

That wreath is so cute. I love all the fabric circle I did one similar for st.patricks day it was a lot of fun. Thank you for your comment!

A mommy's life...with a touch of YELLOW
tyandwhitneyulrich.blogspot.com

Janelle said...

Your wreath is beautiful! My husband pretty much feels the same way about anything I make... dudes! :)

JC said...

Looks great! Cheers for patriotism! Good luck with your future chair project!
~JC Jackson

Karima said...

Hi I am your newest google follower, great post! Karima x
www.karimascrafts.com

Unknown said...

LOVE! So gorgeous! I am doing an America the Beautiful series right now on my blog. I hope you will hop over and check it out!
Jenni (your newest follower)
kissedbyafrog.blogspot.com

★Carol★ said...

I never in a million years could have come up with a wreath like this! I'm so impressed, especially with the ribbon that you created to be the hanger. I love it too!
Happy REDnesday,
Carol

Mindie Hilton said...

I am just reminding everyone about tonights link party that runs Friday evening through Mondays!
I also have an ongoing give away link party now too.
Hope to see you soon.
http://bacontimewiththehungryhypo.blogspot.com/
come strut your stuff

~Iffy~ @ StayAtHomeNation said...

Thank you for linking up with My Favorite Things Party. I didn't see my button on this post so please let me know if you have any problems with it. Thanks =D
XX
~Iffy~

Kristie said...

Thank you, I've been wondering if ther is a better way than guessing to measure for a ruffle!!! You ROCK!!! I did think this is as adorable as it sounded when you told me all about it, LOVE it all!!! Silly M!

Unknown said...

This is soo cute! Love the colors and the stars! Sometimes hubbies are soo silly.. mine usually offers constructive critiscm and then tries to do the project himself! Thanks so for sharing with the Pink Hippo Party.. can't wait to see what you share next week!

Andie Jaye said...

what fun! the blue ribbon really adds to it! i don't think it'd look as festive without it. thanks for linking this up! hope to see you next week!

annies home said...

This is something that I really like when I was a kid I was in 4H and won many blue ribbons this brings back memories and I may just try to recreate something like this for our summer/fall decor
come visit me at http://shopannies.blogspot.com

Jenn Erickson said...

I love the 4th too, and your wreath so beautifully encapsulates the pageantry and joy of the holiday!

Thank you so much for linking up to "A Little Birdie Told Me..."!

Jenn