This month’s wreath design is inspired by delicious ice cream, the trend for Instagram-friendly “unicorn food”, and the way we all share our holiday snaps on social media.
The wreath features a large, colourful felt ice cream topped with sequin and bead “sprinkles”, a pair of heart-eye emojis, an “OMG!” speech bubble, and lots of felt hearts.
If you don’t fancy making the whole wreath, the ice cream would look fab appliqued to a cushion cover or a bag, or worn as an awesome statement brooch. The emojis and speech bubble would also make cute brooches or patches - as well as stitching “OMG!” in the speech bubble you could also stitch “WOW!” or “YAY!” or other short words.
This tutorial originally appeared on
The Village Haberdashery's
blog - visit their shop for lots of crafty goodness! I'm sharing
all twelve seasonal wreath tutorials here on my blog as the year
progresses.
You will need:
The template sheets (
click here to view, download and print the PDF)
A 30cm polystyrene ring wreath base
Half a metre of Kona cotton in Baby Pink (or other fabric of your choice)
Wool blend felt in the following colours: yellow, red, black, bright pink, white, light brown, light blue, light pink, and lilac
Sewing threads to match all the felt colours
Black embroidery thread
Embroidery thread to match the beige felt
Assorted sequins, bugle beads and seed beads in co-ordinating colours
Sewing scissors
Embroidery scissors (great for cutting out small or detailed felt shapes)
Sewing needle and pins
A small piece of semi-transparent paper (tracing paper, white tissue paper or baking paper) and a fine black pen, OR an air-erasable fabric marker pen
A glue gun and glue
A heat-proof mat for the glue gun
Newspaper to protect your workspace from any glue drips
Optional: a piece of co-ordinating yarn or ribbon for hanging the wreath
To make the wreath:
1. Use the template provided to cut out 25 pieces from your chosen fabric for wrapping the wreath base. You may need to cut a few more strips later to finish wrapping the wreath, but it’s better to cut fewer strips to start with than end up wasting fabric!
2. Add the fabric strips to the wreath base one by one, using a glue gun to secure the ends at the back of the wreath. Overlap the fabric strips so there are no gaps where the polystyrene base can show through. For each fabric strip, add a dab or two of hot glue to the back of the wreath then carefully press the fabric into position. If required use the template to cut more fabric strips, adding them until the whole base is covered in fabric.
IMPORTANT: take care when working with the glue gun as the glue gets very hot! Always place it on a heat-proof mat when not in use, and use newspaper or other scrap paper to protect your workspace. Work slowly, squeezing the gun with care to control the amount of glue you’re using and keeping your fingers out of the way of the hot glue.
The wreath base will now look something like this:
3. Use the templates provided to cut out the emoji pieces: four yellow circles, four red heart eyes, and two black smiles. Arrange the small pieces on two of the circles, as shown, sewing them in place with running stitch and matching sewing thread. Then sew each decorated circle to a backing plain circle, joining them with yellow sewing thread and whip stitch.
4. Use the templates provided to cut out the heart pieces: six large bright pink hearts and eight small red hearts. Sew two layers of each shape together with whip stitch and matching sewing thread, making a total of three large pink hearts and four small red ones.
5. Use the templates provided to cut out two speech bubbles from white felt. Trace the “OMG!” text onto a small piece of white tissue paper, tracing paper or baking paper with a fine black pen. Position the text in the centre of one of the speech bubble pieces and pin it in place, sew it with large tacking stitches (avoiding the text itself) then remove the pins.
If you have an air-erasable fabric marker pen you can skip the paper pattern if you want and just write “OMG!” directly onto one of the felt pieces.
6. Stitch the text with backstitch and black embroidery thread (using half the available strands – so, for six-stranded embroidery thread just use three strands). Then remove the tacking stitches and carefully tear away the paper.
7. Sew the decorated front of the speech bubble to the plain backing piece using whip stitch and white sewing thread.
8. Use the templates provided to cut out the ice cream pieces: one light blue top scoop, one lilac middle scoop, one light pink bottom scoop, and one each of the cone pieces from beige felt.
Pin all the pieces onto a large piece of pink felt as shown (any colour felt will do for this, but make sure to use the same colour again in step 9) then trim away the excess felt, leaving a rough border around the ice cream. The ice cream should be approximately 26 cm high.
9. Begin sewing the ice cream pieces to the backing felt, using matching sewing threads and sewing only along the inside edges of the shape (i.e. not where you’ll be trimming away the excess backing felt later). Whip stitch along the bottom edges of the top two ice cream scoops then sew the top edges of the cone with one stitch between each scallop.
10. Sew a crisscrossed design on the ice cream cone to create a waffle effect. Use backstitch and half strands of matching embroidery thread, sewing lines in one direction and then the other as shown. Sew the lines freehand (they don’t have to be perfectly straight!) or use an air-erasable fabric marker pen to draw guide lines for your stitching.
11. Decorate the top scoop of the ice cream to look as if it’s been covered in sprinkles. Add seed beads, bugle beads, and sequins, or use lots of different colours of embroidery thread to create stitched sprinkles. I started with large sequins, then added bugle beads and smaller sequins, and then filled in the spaces with seed beads.
12. Carefully trim the excess backing felt from around the ice cream, taking care not to accidentally snip any of your stitching.
13. Use the ice cream as a template to cut out a matching backing piece of felt (I used pink felt for this, as before). Pin the layers together then whip stitch around the edges. Sew each section with matching sewing thread, removing the pins as you sew.
You should now have a collection of felt elements ready to add to your wreath.
14. Arrange the felt pieces on the wreath as pictured and use pins to hold them in position.
One by one, remove the pins and secure the felt pieces with a dab or two of hot glue. To attach the large pieces, add some glue to the wreath base then carefully press the shapes down into position. To attach the smaller pieces, add a dab of glue directly to the back of the felt shape then very carefully press it in position on the wreath.
Your wreath is now finished! Add a length of yarn or co-ordinating ribbon for hanging the wreath, or hang it directly from a hook or nail.
This tutorial is for non commercial use only: you can use it to make as many wreaths as you want for yourself or as gifts, but
please don't make any for sale. You may borrow a couple of photos if you want
to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to
this page on my blog, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial / share my templates on your
site. Thanks!
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