Craft-Tastic!

What did we make tonight?

First off, we finished our Cookie Monster Pillow. I have to say it only took me two years to complete a needlepoint designed for children (and I don't just mean that it's children's themed, I mean it's actually designed for a CHILD to needlepoint it... whatever! It's done).... so then I sewed it together with a piece of yellow fleece and stuffed it and Voila! Cookie Monster pillow for Miss B.

THEN.... it was on to the big craft of the evening.... the Sweater Wreath!

Here's a picture of our inspiration: This was featured on the Viva Terra website... looks simple enough, right? Let's see!

First, we needed a wire hanger ("No More Wire Hangers!!!!") This was very reminiscent to me of a project I did in Kindergarten where we made wreaths out of strips of plastic garbage bags tied onto hangers. Let's hope our version is a little more upscale!

I'm in the bedroom, trying to bend a hanger into a wreath shape and all of a sudden the Husband goes into his closet and pulls out a hanger already straight and ready to be made into a wreath! How random is that? He did say it was blog worthy and I'd have to agree. Turns out he'd already reclaimed a hanger for use as a tool to fish wires through the walls while mounting our flat screen tv, so his home improvement gizmo is my craft gain!

With my wire hanger ready, I needed my supplies. Thanks to the Mom I had a ton of sweaters, in great jewel tone colors! I had started with some of my old sweaters and the Mom hit up her local $1 thrift store for some other colors. I washed them all together on hot and then dried them on high. The sweaters all felted up very nicely. If you're looking to replicate this, make sure you use sweaters that are 100% wool-- acrylics won't felt. For that matter, some wool felts up better than others as well. Shetland does particularly well, cashmeres and other softer yarns not so much. But, for the most part, if you are working with 100% wool you can get it to felt, eventually!
With my sweaters together I used a 4" quilter's template and my pinking shears to cut the sweaters into squares. I also supplemented my sweater squares with yellow and green anti-pill fleece squares (I didn't have any yellow or green sweaters but I wanted to mix up the colors).
I didn't follow any exact pattern with the squares, I just tried to make it look nice. Once all of the squares were on the hanger, I connected the two ends in a loop (I needed a good pair of pliers for this part) and then I covered the wire loop with ribbon (thanks, hot glue gun!)
I do want to find a green sweater that I can felt and make a holly sprig (with red button accents) as shown in our inspiration piece. But overall, I'm pretty happy with the end result!