A Year of Wreaths: January Rainbow Wreath Tutorial

Banish the January blues with this bright and cheerful rainbow felt wreath!

These happy colours are perfect for brightening up dull winter days and I’ve added a bit of sparkle too (yay!).

Want to welcome visitors but prefer a more muted colour palette? Just switch in your seven favourite shades in place of the rainbow colours. 

This tutorial originally appeared on The Village Haberdashery's blog - visit their shop for lots of crafty goodness! I'll be sharing all twelve seasonal wreath tutorials here on my blog as the year progresses.

You will need:

The template sheet provided (click here to view, download and print the PDF)
A 30cm polystyrene ring wreath base
Felt in 7 rainbow colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and pink
Black and white felt
Gutermann Metallic Effect Thread #41 (or other metallic thread)
Sewing scissors
Embroidery scissors
Sewing needles and pins
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 string or co-ordinating ribbon for hanging the wreath

To make the wreath:

1. Use the templates provided to cut out 7 small felt circles (one of each rainbow colour), 7 large black felt circles and 7 white felt letters spelling out the word “welcome”.

Tip: embroidery scissors are perfect for cutting out small felt shapes!

2. One by one, sew each small circle to a backing large circle. Use Gutermann Metallic Effect thread and whip stitch, keeping your stitches as even as possible. If you're using metallic effect embroidery thread (floss), just use a couple of strands of the thread (floss).

Tip: this metallic thread is easy to sew with, but I’d recommend cutting a shorter length of thread than you’d usually work with to make sure it doesn’t tangle.

3. Add one letter to each circle in colour order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink. Use more of the metallic thread to sew each letter in place, sewing around the inside of the letters with backstitch as shown.

4. Use the templates provided to cut the felt strips for wrapping the wreath. Cut 4 standard strips and 1 wide strip from red felt. Then cut 5 standard strips from each of the other 6 rainbow colours.

5. Beginning with the wide red strip, position the felt pieces on top of the wreath base as shown. Add the pieces in colour order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink), overlapping them slightly so that none of the polystyrene ring base will show through at the edges of the wreath.

6. When you’ve added all the pieces and are happy with the arrangement, insert pins to hold the felt in position.

7. Turn the wreath over. One by one, wrap the felt pieces around the wreath and pin the ends in place.

The back of your wreath will now look something like this:

8. Use a glue gun to secure the ends of the felt at the back of the wreath. Work on one piece of felt at a time, removing the pin(s) holding it in place and folding the felt back slightly. Carefully add a dab or two of hot glue to the wreath base, then very carefully press the felt down into position,.

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.

Tip: you may find it helpful to test glue a couple of scrap pieces of felt before you start, so you can see how much glue you need to use to hold each piece in place.

9. Once the glue has dried, turn the wreath over and remove the pins from the front. The front of your wreath will now look something like this:

10. Arrange the felt circles on the wreath as shown, spelling out the word “welcome”. The edges of the circles should touch but not overlap each other. When you’re happy with the layout, pin the circles in place.

Tip: position the circles so they help hide the join where you started and finished wrapping the wreath.

11. Use the glue gun to attach the circles to the wreath. One by one, remove a pin and set aside a circle. Add two or three dabs of glue on the wreath then carefully press the circle back in place. Make sure to keep the letters neatly aligned as you glue them in place!

12. Your wreath is now finished! If needed, cut a length of string or co-ordinating ribbon and knot it securely around the top of the wreath. Use this to hang the wreath in your chosen spot.

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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The Evolution of a Rainbow Blanket

Blogging about my mini patchwork squares blanket last month made me realise that I never got round to properly photographing my rainbow blanket when I finished it a couple of years ago. I blogged about it being almost finished, and said I'd take photos of it finished "sometime soon" but, alas, never found the time and here we are two years later already.
 
I love my rainbow blanket, and really enjoyed making it so (as with the mini squares blanket last month) so I'm taking a look back at how it's developed over the years before having a "yay! finished blankets!" photo session.

 

In my teens I knitted a couple of blankets as gifts for my family, and also knitted a whole bunch of squares that never got used for anything. I rediscovered them in my 20s and began very slowly knitting more squares so I could finally turn them into a finished blanket. Or, rather, two blankets, because teen me (by accident? or by design??) had been knitting two different sizes of squares!

I finished the first blanket in 2013 (click to see pictures!), and in 2014 was busy knitting squares in assorted bright colours to add to the second blanket. All the squares were knitted in plain garter stitch, using double knit acrylic yarn and UK size 8 (4mm) knitting needle, casting on 30 stitches to make squares measuring approximately 14cm. 

At this point I had a whole bunch of dark grey squares in the mix (knitted with yarn left over from my sky blanket) and was thinking about putting the squares together in a block design similar to the one I was using for my mini squares blanket.
 

I wasn't totally happy with this layout, though, so I just focused on knitting squares from the yarn I already had and added in a few more colours I thought would blend in well.

In October that year I took out the darker squares and arranged the others in colour order and they just POPPED so the grey definitely had to go (I unravelled them and re-knitted them as mini squares for my patchwork blanket). 

By July 2015 I had 70 squares knitted, but the colour mix was looking a bit imbalanced.

I thought about just adding in some greens to balance out the "hot" reds and pinks, but decided to go for the full spectrum and cram in as many bright, happy colours as possible. So I bought a few more balls of yarn in zingy shades and continued slowly knitting more squares.
    

Frustratingly, when playing around with possible layouts for the blanket, I realised that a whole bunch of the squares were too big! (I guess I must have muddled up my knitting needles at some point?) I unravelled them all and started re-knitting them the correct size in the summer of 2015.

I spent the autumn of that year knitting a lot of blanket squares...

 

  ... and by November my stash of squares looked like this:

In December 2015 I finally sat down and planned the final layout. I'd been building up my rainbow spectrum stash without any real plan and was very pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to fit all the squares together; I just needed some more green!

 

I started stitching the outer sections of the blanket together...

... bought a final ball of bright green yarn, and began knitting green squares.
 

I finished knitting the very final square while watching Eurovision in May 2016 (I love Eurovision), then immediately started adding the remaining squares to the blanket.

I couldn't stop smiling while weaving the in the last few yarn ends; those colours just burst with happiness!

I wove in and trimmed the last of the yarn ends on May 25th 2016.

I've used the blanket a lot since then (I'm actually sitting on it right now as I type this) and it brings me joy on a daily basis. I hope I'll have a chance to take lots of snaps to capture that rainbow joy and properly show it off in another blog post sometime soon!

In the meantime... for more blanket-y goodness, follow the links to read about the making of my patchwork mini squares blanket, or my sky blanket.

Felt Weather Mobile Tutorial

Learn how to sew a cute felt weather mobile!

 

 

I designed this mobile as a workshop project for The Village Haberdashery last year. Sadly the class didn't go ahead but happily I've turned it into a free tutorial for their blog instead (yay!).

 

 
As well as making a full mobile, you could also use this tutorial for making individual felt rainbows, rain clouds and smiling suns. They'd make fab felt brooches or ornaments, or you could use them to decorate other projects - a felt rainbow would look awesome wherever you decide to stitch it.

 

Click here to find the templates and step by step tutorial over on The Village Haberdashery's blog. 

Subscribe to my newsletter for a monthly free pattern and visit my crafty tutorial archive for lots more free projects.

54 Instagram Hashtags for Colour Lovers

I love colour. The brighter the better!

When I first joined Instagram I loved it but felt a little out of place - so many of the accounts I followed were full of muted and minimal colours: a sea of soft greys and browns and lots of white space.

But of course, there are loads of colour-lovers on Instagram and loads of great hashtags for sharing your colourful photos or finding new colour-filled accounts to follow. So I thought it might be helpful to share some of my faves in a blog post in case other people are struggling to find the colourful side of Instagram.

(Well this post started out as a short list of my faves... and I got a bit carried away! The more colour-focused hashtags the better, right??)

Before I begin - one of the tricky things about colour themed hashtags is that there are two different ways to spell colour (or color). If there are two popular versions of a tag I'll in this list along with the current numbers of photos shared under each, so you can see how they compare. Usually the American spelling is most popular, but not always!

Ready to fill your Instagram feed with colour? Here goes...

1. #ihavethisthingwithcolor (150K) #ihavethisthingwithcolour (16K)

2. #ihavethisthingwithpink (100K)

3. #abmlifeiscolorful (1.5 million)

4. #capturingcolor (16K) #capturingcolour (78K)

5. #colorcolourlovers (123K)

6. #colorventures (283K) #colourventures (4K)

7. #dscolor (825K)

8. #dspink (38K)

9. #livecolorfully (1.4 million) #livecolourfully (60K)

10. #candyminimal (318K)

11. #colormehappy (116K) #colourmehappy (63K)

12. #colorinspiration (114K) #colourinspiration (56K)

13. #colorlove (146K) #colourlove (51K)

14. #colorlover (50K) #colourlover (8K)

15. #colorlovers (28K)  #colourlovers (25K)

16. #colorgram (354K) #colourgram (5K)

17. #dailydoseofcolor (39K) #dailydoseofcolour (1K)

18. #colormyjoy (3K) #colourmyjoy (9K)

19. #colors_ofourlives (225K) #colors_ofourlives (3K)

20. #colorsplash (977K) coloursplash (290K)

21. #brightcolors (386K) #brightcolours (122K)

22. #ilovecolor (102K) #ilovecolour (21K)

23. #coloraddict (37K) #colouraddict (8K)

24. #colorblockvibes (3K)

25. #happycolors (73K) #happycolours (23K)

26. #colorsorganizedneatly (1K)

27. #popyacolor (45K) #popyacolour (411K)

28. #colorhunting (11K) #colourhunting (8K)

29. #colorhunter (10K)

30. #popsofcolor (20K) #popsofcolour (4K)

31. #allthecolors (76K) #allthecolours (36K)

32. #thatcolorproject (193K) #thatcolourproject (1K)

33. #colourmyhome (10K)

34. #colormyworld (46K) #colourmyworld (18K)

35. #coloryourworld (29K) #colouryourworld (23K)

36. #inspirationiscolour (9K)

37. #showusthecolor (9K)

38. #brightcolorsmakemehappy (8K) #brightcoloursmakemehappy (3K)

39. #candycolors (100K) #candycolours (9K)

40. #colorpalette (136K) #colourpalette (69K)

41. #foundpalettes (7K)

42. #huntgramcolor (39K)

43. #colorsplurge (791K)

44. #colorfullycrafted (21K)

45. #howihue (42K)

46. #colormakesmehappy (11K) #colourmakesmehappy (3K)

47. #craftherainbow (60K)

48. #madeitrainbow (2K)

49. #dsrainbow (16K)

50. #my_flatlayrainbow (less than 1K)

51. #iloverainbows (17K)

52. #colorcrush (126K) #colourcrush (20K)

53. #colorexplosion (30K) #colourexplosion (14K)

54. #color_me_minimal (56K)


Know any other great hashtags for colour lovers? Share them in the comments! 

Click here to check out my colourful Instagram account: lauralupinhoward

January in Pictures: Rainbows, Sketches, and a Seaside Sunset

One month of 2017 finished already! How did that happen??

My January was rather busy. I've been juggling DIY and deadlines, doing my best to fit everything into my days and working around all the mess and general chaos created by DIY projects. We've been getting a lot done, but there's still lots to do!

I've begun to settle into my new home, but I have to admit that I'm missing being able to easily pop into London for the day. I've been pining a little for the big museums and places like Liberty...

... but I've been loving being able to take daily walks along the beach and seafront, especially at sunset. Aren't those colours just heavenly?

Here on my blog I looked back at 2016, blogging about last year's crafty projects and Nice Days Out (including a very special trip to Bamburgh), as well as a wonderful walk I took with my dad.

I've also made a start on editing more Nice Day Out photos ready for future blog posts, including photos from the two highly enjoyable photowalks I went on last year. This is one of the photos I took at Chiswick Park station during the first photowalk - I can't stop noticing these kinds of details now!

For my New Year's Resolution, I resolved to read more books and joined the local library to help me do so. I'll be blogging about how I'm getting on sometime soon. Spoiler alert: not having a television or home broadband (because one's in a box and the other hasn't been connected yet) definitely helps you find more time to read!

I've also decided to try and do more sketching and to not be afraid to a) sketch in public and b) show you guys some of my sketches instead of just my finished designs. It feels a bit weird sharing my messy sketches, but I'm going to do it anyway.

This month (apart from secret sketches for things I can't show you yet) I sketched lots of spring flowers as inspiration for some new projects...

... and I did some sketching at the British Museum, too. It was lovely having a busy day in London at the end of the month but I also really enjoyed taking a bit of time out to find a quiet corner* of the Museum and focus on some sketches. The end result might not be perfect, but the process - my goodness, what an absolute pleasure it is to just take the time to draw things.

(*Well, I thought it was a quiet corner - I was in an almost-empty gallery to start with, then a tour of the gallery began and at one point the whole tour group were standing around the same cabinet I was sketching in front of! Eek! It was nice listening to the tour guide as I sketched, though, and I can only hope everyone was paying more attention to her words and the contents of the cabinet than to my scribblings!).

So much of January was dark and grey, I was craving bright colour. I started two new Instagram hashtags for colour lovers and got crafty with a rainbow of felt. I've also been cheering things up by using some of the novelty pencils I bought as a kid, including this fine fellow. All the serious business professionals are using troll pencils these days, dontcha know. 

That felt rainbow became a felt rainbow wreath tutorial, kickstarting the Year of Wreaths I'm designing for The Village Haberdashery. I also started a series of fruity tutorials here on my blog - I'll be posting a new one every week or so this month.

I can't wait to show you February's wreath! I delivered it by hand, since I was in London for the day. I managed to (coincidentally) time my visit for the opening day of The Village Haberdashery's new, much bigger shop. It's such a gorgeous, colourful space - I mean, just check out their yarn wall!

Blimey, that blog post was over almost as quickly as January was. Here's hoping February doesn't fly by quite so fast...

I'm lauralupinhoward on Instagram - click here to visit my page and follow me. You'll also find me on Facebook and Twitter.