Rainbow Fabric Wreath

Each year for Christmas, the kids create gifts to give to their grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors.  A few Christmases ago Annalise and I came up with the brilliant idea to make wreaths for the grandparents made out of pinecones and glass ornament balls.  So cute, right?  Can't you picture it?  I looked online (pre-Pinterest) to find directions and the only directions I found were for gluing, using a hot glue gun, the ornaments to the wreath.  This may have held the ornaments for one Christmas (if we glued them correctly, that is).  But I knew with our hot summers (and an even hotter one in Arizona with one set of grandparents) that the ornaments would not stayed glued on to the wreaths.  I had visions of shattered glass on my front porch, where bare feet prevail year round.  Not pretty.  So I invented my own way of attaching the ornaments... with floral wire.  Brilliant, right?  Yeah, not so much.  It was a total pain in the ass.  Annalise (who was I think 8 at the time) could hardly participate in the process because she couldn't wrap the wire tight enough.  And the gift was supposed to be from her.  The balls flopped all over the place, leaving too many holes in the wreath.  They ended up requiring way more ornaments than we had estimated, making our homemade gift ridiculously expensive as well.  Needless to say, we didn't make it to a second wreath.  (How were we going to get that thing safely to Arizona anyway?  Let's just say it wasn't a fully thought through plan.  This seems to be a pattern.)  Each Christmas my mom proudly displays her ornament wreath on her front door and each time I come to the door I growl at it a bit, say a few choice curse words and go on my way.

There is a point to this story.  We had two more wire wreath frames (because I was going to make one of the ornament frames for ourselves, too!  What a great idea!) and still no gift for Grandma and Papa.  Enter Plan B.  We had some extra Christmas fabric laying around because my mom makes fabric bags for all our Christmas gifts, which is awesome and another entry into itself.  I snagged her pinking shears and started cutting up strips of fabric.  The fabric was easily tied by Annalise onto the wreath frame and Grandma and Papa got a great Christmas wreath that is easily transportable and storable, and will not break or cut anyone's bare foot.  Grandma proudly displays it above her fireplace each Christmas.  And it's pretty cute, too.  And way less frustrating.  I never cuss at it.

With Juliette's rainbow party coming up, I saw a bunch of cute rainbow wreaths on Pinterest and decided I needed to make another fabric scrap wreath.  (After all I still had that extra wreath frame just sitting around.)  So I did!  Want to see it?  You know you want to...

Ta da!  I gotta admit.  I'm a little proud.  (Mostly just because I actually finished something I started.)  This is a super easy, kid-friendly, inexpensive project to do.  And easy to adapt to any holiday, season or color scheme.

Here's how I made this wreath...

First I gathered up all our scraps of fabric in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.

And then I called my friend Amber and asked her for her scraps.  I wanted variety.

Then I cut the fabric into 6 - 8 inch strips, depending on the scrap of fabric.  In no way was I exact.  I only measured to give you an idea of about how long to make the strips.  (When the wreath is finished, you can trim up the ends if you want a more uniform length.)

My (ok Mom's) pinking shears are tough to use, so this part I needed to do.  The kids can do the tying.

Then I tied one strip of each color (except purple since I didn't have any yet) to mark the spots where I would start each section.  I only tied each piece one time (not a double knot).

The wreath is already divided into nine sections, so with six colors, each color got a section and a half.  Then I started tying.  I had more blue than anything else, so I started with blue.  I used a variety of fabrics for each color and spread them around so no one fabric bunched up.  I'm estimating about 40 strips of fabric for each section.  It varies depending on the type of fabric.  You just want to hide the frame.

Juliette likes it.

Even after raiding Amber's stash I still needed to buy some fabric.  I bought 1/8 of a yard (which was still more than I needed, but the smallest size that JoAnn's will cut) of a couple yellows, oranges and purples.  I wasn't picky with which fabrics I chose, so I chose just on price.  On average, I spent about 75 cents per fabric.  I had only one coupon, which was a 40% off one item.  It went to the white chocolate pretzels that Juliette and I shared.  That was a healthy, well-balanced lunch.  All in this wreath cost me about $6.  Actually this is way more than I wanted to spend.  I was hoping it would be freeeeeeeee!  If you are a sewer you will have way more fabric scraps than I have, making this a super cheap project.  I have no idea how much the wreath frame cost nor where I bought it to begin with.  I'm guessing Michael's.  In time, the wreath took a couple nights, plopped on the couch in front of the TV, but expect it to take longer if you have little hands helping you.

Extreme close up...

Here's our front door.  Super welcoming, right?  Especially with the fingerprints all over!  What a bright, beautiful January day!  The wreath will be up for the rainbow party, but expect it to make a repeat performance each year for Saint Patrick's Day!