~ 4th of July Felt Wreath Tutorial ~

The 4th of July is right around the corner.  I know I'm pushing it by posting this hoping my readers will have time to create this work of art. The first time it only took me 4 hours to do.  But that was cutting out double felt (a friend was doing one too). And we actually had LOTS of felt left over. So I'd cut that to probably 3.5 hours. The 2nd time I knew what I was doing, so it was only like 2.5 hours.

The good thing about this project is that your measurements don't have to precise. You'll spend HOURS if you're measuring everything. So just eyeball it! :)

Did I come up with this on my own? No!  I did not get it off Pinterest, I actually just googled felt wreaths, changed it to images, and this one came up.  So, big thanks to that gal!  :)  I did a few things different than her, but still the same concept.

If you noticed there are 2 backgrounds to these pictures, I actually did this wreath twice, one for me and one for my mom.  Glad I did them twice because I left out a few pictures the 1st time around. :)  


What you'll need:

• Scissors
• Thin Craft Wire
• Push pins (my box was 750, didn't use all of them)
• Rounded floral wreath (mine was 12")
• 1/2 to 1 yard of each color (might use more or less, depends how FULL you want it)
• Ruler (if you want)
• Pen (to curl your craft wire)
• Hot glue gun or glue
• Stars (size and how you get them is personally up to you) 
• Small strip of any color ribbon to hang it with

The squares you will cut out will be 2" X 2".  What I did was cut out strips that were 2 inches.  Then when I started cutting out the squares, I measured the first one and then eyeballed the rest. Remember, nothing has to be precises on this.

We folded the felt, measured and cut little slits up to 12 inches. Less cut time, because then you had 12 strips.

This is way too much, but wanted to be safe than sorry.  I could have probably made 2 wreaths with what I cut.

Mark your wreath where your blue will be.  What I did was start my whites out on those ends of the blue. I did 5 bunches of white and 4 of red. 

Next you will fold a square, corner to corner, then corner to corner again. Like a triangle.

The top of the triangle is where your push pin will go. And you'll continue to do your squares like this.

From there you'll add another layer on top of that. Same concept, but this time you'll place the pin in between where the others connected.   Like a flower concept. 

Only 2 sides of the 2nd layer.

The full 2nd layer.

Then you'll fluff them out.

I did my white patches first.

Then you'll start with your red inbetween those whites, same concept.

Before filling in to make full.

Now you need to fill in to make them fuller.  I added probably 3 extra squares down each side of the "flower".  How full you want it is personally up to you. It'll get tight but still try to fill in as much as possible.

Next you'll start on your blue.  I did 3 bunches of flowers then filled in the same way.

Looks pretty neat so far, right? But your not done. What about the green that's showing on the inside of your wreath and the outter edges?  Yup, you guessed it, time to fill those in too!  Just keep filling in and tucking under the other squares.

Ok, now that looks better!

Last but not least is the stars!

If you have a cricut you can use that for your stars, you can also use the star punches found at Hobby Lobby. Sadly I sold most of my cricut cartridges and our Hobby Lobby only had the super small star punch. So I got on Microsoft Word, found a star, put them on a document and printed them out.  I then put that paper in a laminated pouch (non heat kind).  WRONG!  Cut the stars out and THEN put them in the laminated pouch!  If you put the full paper in the pouch then cut the stars out, 1 side will be laminated.  I do not know what I was thinking!  I mean, we were watching Magic Mike while doing this, maybe that's the problem!

Now do you have to laminate them? No, you don't. But if your wreath is outside, it'll be just a tad bit more weather resistant.

You'll cut your craft wire out, depending how curly and long you want it. Totally up to you.  You'll then twist it around your pen.

Next you'll flatten out the center of the wire.

Next you'll hot glue your stars onto the flat part of the wire.  Then you'll stick them in the blue part of your wreath. I had a hard time finding the green part of the wreath to stick them in.  I'm not sure how they will hold up just by sticking that small wire into the wreath, I might decide to go back and hot glue them to the wreath and hide the glue under the felt. I personally kinda pushed the stars closer to the wreath.  I didn't like them POPPING out too much, it make it look weird.

Depending where you put the wreath you'll probably have to get some ribbon and make a loop and pin it to the back of the wreath to hang up on the door. You actually can't see the ribbon on the door because of the hook I used. :)  So it doesn't really matter what color you use. 

If you have ANY questions please feel free to email me, tweet me, or facebook me! :)