Burlap Country Wedding Wreath Tutorial

My son, Joey and his fiancee, Hailey are getting married in a couple of weeks. They are having an intimate country-style wedding. In keeping with the country theme, the wedding decor will consist of burlap and flowers. Hailey and I are making all of the decorations. One of those decorations consists of a wedding wreath made from burlap roses and a fabric portrait of the happy couple. The really cool thing about this wreath is they can use it to decorate their home long after the wedding is over.

 Here's how we made it:

Supplies:

• Wreath of choice - we used a 14" straw wreath;
• glue gun;
• glue sticks;
• scissors;
• pinking shears;
• burlap in several colors (we used aqua (which we dyed ourselves), oyster and light brown;
• felt in coordinating colors to match the burlap;
• fabric image(s) and word(s) printed from home computer (we used June Tailor's Sew-in Colorfast Fabric in the pink package);
• a handful of batting;
• heart template to complement the size of the project (we made ours out of regular white printer paper).

Directions:

Take a wreath and wrap around it with a strip of burlap. Glue ends into place with a glue gun. Set aside.

Make up a whole bunch of burlap roses. We used this tutorial by Craftaholics Anonymous for making the roses and varied the directions slightly to accommodate our project.   For example, we made the roses in varying sizes.  The smallest roses were made with 10" strips of burlap; the larger flowers were made with 15" strips of burlap.

In addition, since we had so many roses to make, we hot-glued the flowers in an assembly-line fashion to the coordinating felt pieces, let them cool and then cut around the roses with scissors.

Set the roses aside.


Place heart template over desired photo.  You can either trace around the template and then cut out the heart, or carefully cut around the template with scissors.  If you wish to use words in your wreath, go ahead and cut them out now, too, but not too close to the letters.  You will need to have a scant 1/2" border around the letters.

Turn fabric image (heart) over so the right side is facing the work surface.  Apply a thin line of hot glue around the inner edge of the heart.  Do not apply glue to the bottom of the heart.  Carefully turn the heart over and place it on top of a piece of felt.  Repeat with the word(s), making sure to leave one edge unglued.
Let cool.

Once cool, take batting and lightly stuff the heart and word(s).  Don't overstuff these or they will be difficult to close.

Carefully apply hot glue to the underside of the open part of the heart and word(s).  Press down onto the felt.  Once cool, cut out the heart and word(s) with pinking shears, taking care not to cut into the glued borders.  You now have mini, sew-free "pillows" to personalize your wreath.

Use hot glue gun to apply the flowers, picture and word(s) to the wreath.  And wa-la - there you have it - a unique, personalized wreath perfect for wedding decor or to complement any room in the house.

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