Winter wreath

I was planning to make a wreath for Valentine's Day. After making the Santa wreath for Christmas, I got used to having one hanging on the front door, and it looked kind of bare without one.

I walk by a florist on my way to work that has some beautiful feather wreaths hanging in the window. I stopped in to take a look, but they were really pricey. I had seen some inexpensive feather boas in a store in Chinatown, so I decided to try making one myself.

True to form, I had a heck of a time finding any kind of wreath form downtown, so I resorted to buying a wire form and covering it myself using quilt bat and strips of white cotton that I had hanging around in with my sewing supplies. I just used safety pins to hold the ends of the fabric down - once the form is covered by the boas you can't see them anyway.

I pinned down the end of one boa, and then proceeded to wind it loosely around the wreath. When I came to the end of one boa, I used the bit of cord that the boa is constructed with to tie it to the end to the next boa. I used three of them. They were quite flimsy and sparse - if you had thick boas you might only need two. When I reached the end of the third boa, I used another safety pin to attach it to the wreath form.

Since I had planned this for Valentine's Day, I also picked up the heart circle thing you can see in the pictures, thinking I would somehow suspend it in the middle of the wreath. When I finished wrapping with the white boas, I really liked it as it was, and decided to forgo the hearts. So it's a winter wreath, not a Valentine's wreath.

To hang it I used a length of white organza ribbon, tying the ends of it around the wreath and then fluffing the feathers back out around it.

Not bad for 20 minutes work.