V'day wreath

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I heart fabric wreaths

Is anyone else missing Christmas? Everything looks so bare, and I miss holiday crafting. Up next on the calendar for things-we-can-decorate-for is Singles Awareness Day. Er.....Valentines Day. I say that jokingly. I heart Valentines Day (see what I did there?). I know it's supposed to be a manufactured Hallmark holiday and blah blah blah...I might agree with that if the colors were anything other than red and pink. If it was purple and gray or something I'd be all "Meh. Whatever."  But it's pink and red. And white. And there's usually sparkles involved. I always felt my mother should decorate for this day with the same vigor as she does Christmas, but I'm willing to admit this is unrealistic overkill.

Sheesh, I'm rambling. One of my favorite things I've seen and made recently is the tied fabric wreath. Easy, pretty, and simple to customize according to taste and decor. So that's what my first craft is for the holiday. I started off with this:

A 10 inch hoop (as I couldn't find a heart that wasn't Styrofoam), some plain wooden hearts (as I couldn't find something to hang in the center of the wreath that I liked), and 3 half-yard cuts of fabric.

I cut the fabric from selvage to selvage in one and a half inch strips. I then cut those strips into 7-inch lengths (though I'm thinking 8 inches might have been better). I used my rotary pinker to minimize fraying. And then I just tied and tied and tied. Then I smooshed and tied and smooshed and tied until I couldn't squeeze a single thing more on that hoop. I could have left off some of the strips but I was determined to use each and every one of them.

I was hoping to find a cute decorative thing to hang, but I have not been able to find a single thing that I liked or that matched just right. I asked sister Alicia to paint me a heart to hang instead. She did a double-sided heart, and I can't decide which I like better:

So then I put it all together, and this is now on the front door:

From a bit further away it almost looks like a flowered wreath the way the colors kind of meld together, but closer you can see that it's not.

This is so easy to make and I think it's so adorable that I want to make one for everything. Have a few more looks:

And that, said Bee, is that.

Have a swell Monday :)

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