Red White & Blue Yarn Wreath

So back in my Around Here in June post there was a picture of my partially complete wreath. I have been wanting to make more handmade decorations for our home. This was the first push in that direction. Like most good crafts these days, I saw something on Pinterest and recreated it for myself. This one in particular was a pin from Nap Time Crafts and she references a post from The Cellar Door Stories.

I chose similar deeper, more rustic colors for my wreath. We are definitely not a apple red, starch white and true blue kind of people. For my wreath I used Caron Simply Soft yarns in Garnet and Dark Country Blue, and Sugar 'n Cream yarn in Off White. I used a 16-inch straw wreath form. A lot of other tutorials say to use them with the plastic wrapping still on. I prefer to take the wrapping off. While it is messier during the actual making of the wreath, I liked the look of little straw bits poking throughout yarn. Perfectly Imperfect.

I started by wrapping the blue section first. I got as close to a quarter of the circle as I could with the blue yarn. I went over the section few times with yarn to fully cover the wreath form. From there I measured out the remaining open space and divided it by the number of sections I would need. For this wreath form, just about every 3 inches on the outer edge I added a pin. In total there were ten sections, five red and five white.

For the first section of red, I just started measured out about 12 "arm lengths" of yarn to start with. I then made a little ball of yarn to make wrapping easier than trying to use the whole skein. The 12 "arm lengths" (600 inches) of yarn worked fine for each segment, but looking back I could have decreased it to 10 arm lengths or 500 inches per segment. The about of yarn for each section is enough to double back over the section to cover the wreath form entirely. Going back over helps because the inside edge is shorter than the outside edge and it will keep the inside edge looking more even.  In the end, I used less than a skein of yarn for each color.

I finished the wreath by adding 13 stars to the blue section. These were just wooden stars that I added a little bit of paint to, then permanent ink to the edges. They were adhered using Aleene's Original Tacky Craft Glue. And thats that!

I hung it on our door with Raffia ribbon. This stuff comes in a spool and people usually use if for gift wrapping. Our front door is metal, so I used a 3M Command Hook upside down. Another little tip I saw on Pinterest via Timmons Family Lemonade. I made a long loop and knotted it onto the bow I tied around the top of the wreath. If I were more concerned about looks I would have purchased a matching ribbon for the bow, but I just used what was laying around.