Fall Wreath

This is my front door.

It is original to my house. Which means it's about 50 years old. It's not the ugliest door in the world, although it could look better if I gave it a new paint job. But it has gaps and cracks and lets in a lot of cold/hot air. So instead of painting it I just keep wishing and hoping that one day soon we can get a new one. But other than that it also isn't the easiest for wreath hanging. I feel like the only size wreath that looks good is one that fits exactly around that little window. And one of those over the door wreath hangers won't work either. So even though it's not terrible I just really despise this door.

So I have 2 wreaths that fit perfectly on my door and use them all year long. There is this white berry wreath for the spring/summer.

And then I have an identical one in red for the fall/winter. Pretty boring. So I set out to make myself a nice fall wreath this year. I looked through SouthernHospitality's fall door linky party and used some different ideas as inspiration. And this is what I came up with.

It's not the perfect size for the little window but it still looks good! I went to JoAnne's and bought the grapevine wreath for $5. Then I bought 2 yards of natural burlap (way too much for this project, but something I figured would be good to have for the future) at $2.99 per yard. The rest of the fabric for the rosettes was scraps I had plus I had a 20% off my purchase coupon, so the total cost was about $6!!

To make the rosettes I looked up some tutorials online and then just kind of winged it! I started with a burlap one, which was a bit harder to work with than the other fabric. I cut a strip that was about the width and length of a yard stick. Then I folded it in half and pinned it in place with straight pins. 

I'll skip to the next piece of fabric because this is the one I took more pics of! My next piece of fabric was a scrap I had and it was a little wider, so I just folded it in thirds and then pinned.

I started rolling it up tightly sticking a threaded needle through the bottom at times to help hold it together. Then as it got bigger I started folding and twisting the fabric here and there to make it look a little less perfect. If I didn't like how it was looking I would unroll a little and mess with it until I liked the look. ( This is my first tutorial, can you tell? ;)

Here's the finished burlap rosette. Not a lot of twisting or unfolding because the burlap was so hard to work with. 

I also made some smaller rosettes just by using some smaller scraps of fabric. No science to it, just make sure it's wide enough to fold over before rolling into a flower! Then I attached them to my grapevine wreath. I could have hot glued them on but I wanted to be able to easily remove them to transform the wreath for another season/holiday if I so choose :) So I attached them with some more thread!! I pulled the threaded needle through the bottom of the rosette and then through some of the branches of the wreath. I did it a few times until it felt secure, then went on to the next one. 

Some of the smaller rosettes I just sewed to the bigger rosettes instead.

Then I cut out a piece of burlap and it wasn't big enough to make a bow on the top of the wreath, so I made a nice knot instead and called it a day!! What do you think? Worth $6?? I think so! :)

I'm going to attempt to gussy up the rest of the entrance for ThriftyDecorChick's linky party on Friday, October 6. Hope to see you there!!