Yarn Wreath with Felt Flowers

Remember how a few days ago I was lamenting about the fact that Christmas was over?  One of the things I had most about the holidays ending are taking the decorations down.  I love having a wreath on the front door.  So, instead of going back to bare and boring, I decided to spice things up with a do it yourself yarn wreath.  I've read about people making them and goodness knows I have enough spare yarn around the house with all my knitting.  So, after a quick trip to Michael's for the wreath formation and some felt, I was ready to begin.  It is so, so easy and I love the end result.  You can do one for all different holidays just by changing up the colors and things you adorn it with. 

I got my inspiration from Danielle over at Take Heart.  She's got a great blog and tutorial if mine isn't specific enough.  I did a few things a little differently but the end result is similar.  Here's hers:

And here's how I did mine. 

I started with a round foam wreath ring and one skein of cream yarn.

I found that cutting the yarn every yard or two was much easier than wrapping the entire skein around.  I went around one layer as evenly as I could and then wrapped a second layer to cover in the holes.  I really see no point in trying to get it to line up evenly - you'd make yourself crazy and I don't think that the end result would necessarily be any cuter.  I tied each piece of yarn on and then tied it off at the end. 

The front ended up looking like this:

And the back looks like this:

Then comes the fun part which is making the felt flowers.  I used several different bright colors.  First, cut out a squiggly circle - it does NOT need to be perfect.

Then begin to cut the larger circle into a spiral around and around.  Make sure you don't make the spiral sections too thin or your flower won't hold up.

You'll end up with one long piece of felt like this:

Begin to wrap the felt around and around so it forms the shape of a flower.  (Please ignore the white spray paint all over my fingers - I was working on a different project on the same day as this).

Danielle glued hers but I had a stack of pins sitting by and found this worked well because it went all the way through the layers holding it together firmly.  Plus, I liked the little bit of contrasting color showing. 

Each flower will be unique but here is any idea of what a finished piece could look like:

Make the desired number of flowers you want for your wreath.

I glued them to the wreath using tacky glue and added a couple of dark green leaves as well.  Here is the finished product.  It is probably better suited to indoors but our front porch is covered so I'm going to give it a whirl outside after I take my Christmas wreath down after New Year's.