garland | Alaska Knit Nat

It’s week two of the Halloween Blog Party with AK Shopgirl and Tessie Style Blog. This week’s theme is “Woodland Creatures.” We’ll be featuring crafts, costumes, decorations, cocktails and music mixes that represent the fairies, flora and fauna of the forest.

Earlier this week I posted a video tutorial on how to make a fresh flower crown. I’m kicking it up a notch today with a fresh garland to decorate your woodland creatures party or to spruce up your mantle. No video for this tutorial, but I encourage you to watch the time-lapse flower crown tutorial as the technique is similar.

DIY Fresh Garland

Here’s what you’ll need:

About four feet of twine
floral wire (available at crafts stores)
Fresh greens such as salal, plumosa ferns and eucalyptus
Scissors
Wire cutters

Continue reading DIY Fresh Garland →

There are vastly different ways to trim a Christmas tree. Some prefer the all-white glitter tree, while I love bright colors and a homey hodgepodge of ornaments and garlands.

As I was preparing to trim our tree last week I opened our ornament box and was delighted to find a felt garland I’d constructed last year. I had forgotten about it and it kind of made my day to place it on our tree this year. I love popcorn garlands, but they get pretty messy and i have a toddler who is fascinated with the tree and eating things, so I imagine it wouldn’t last long.

This craft is cheery, colorful and easy. It does require the use of a sewing machine and some monotonous cutting. I recommend putting on “A Christmas Story” or some other holiday film you have memorized and cut out your felt while watching it. Mulled wine could be included, if desired.

Easy felt tree garland: No. 6 on Alaska Knit Nat’s DIY Holiday Craft Guide

Craft felt in many different colors (about $5 at Walmart)
Fabric scissors (optional but extremely helpful)
Sewing machine

Directions:

Fold a piece of felt in fourths and cut out 1-inch circle-ish shapes. Repeat with other felt colors until you have about 300 hundred (I really didn’t count. I just cut out circles until I was sick of it.)

Place all your circles in a bowl and set next to your sewing machine. Start sewing across the diameter of a circle with a straight stitch. When you get to the end of the circle, start sewing through another circle. Repeat this until you’ve run out of circles. You’re basically just lining up the circles side by side and sewing a seam through them to keep them together. I didn’t follow a color pattern, I just sewed them randomly. It doesn’t matter what thread color you use, but I imagine gold thread would look neat. I used white. It’s ok if there are gaps between the circles. If you run out of thread mid-garland, just rethread your machine and sew across the most recently sewn circle.

Wrap your garland around your tree. If it’s too short, make more circles and take your garland back to your sewing machine.