Denim Scrap Star Wreath

The last time I was at Dollar tree, they had these cute star-shaped wire wreath forms for deco mesh wreaths, but I thought I could use it to do a fabric scrap wreath. A couple years ago I made a wreath out of strips of denim from a few pairs of jeans that were too damaged to donate. I had a whole bag of denim strips and triangles leftover from that project that were just sitting in my craft stash waiting for a home.

The first thing I did was make several different sized strips of denim to see what worked best. I ended up with strips that were 3/4 of an inch wide and about 7 inches long. A slightly shorter and wider strip would probably work better if you were doing this wreath out of cotton quilt fabric.

I first learned how to do these scrap rag wreaths when I was a kid in 4-H. Explaining how to make one of these wreaths was my demonstration speech project that year. It's funny how stuff like that comes back to you. At any rate, it's really simple. 1. Fold your fabric in half, making a loop on one end. 2. Put the fabric folded in half under the wire wreath. 3. Put the two loose ends through the loop over the top of the wire. 4. Pull tight to create a knot.

You could just tie it in a regular knot, but then the fabric goes off in different directions. This kind of knot (called a larks head knot) keeps the ends of the fabric together and directly above the knot which helps to create fuller looking wreath.

So I took my pile of denim strips and my wreath form to the couch and tied my knots while watching tv. I found it a bit easier to tie off the denim on the outside wires before working inside to the shorter center wires, but I did a section at a time (as opposed to the entire outside ring). When I was done with a section, I put a couple knots of denim on the cross wires too to keep everything looking full.

It took a few hours of ripping denim into strips and tying knots to fill in the whole wreath. I was a bit worried about it as I was working on it, but as I filled it in and fluffed it up, it started looking like a star again. I wished I had some more denim colors to work with, but it was still pretty festive.

I found a navy and white wire ribbon in my craft stash and a red grosgrain ribbon with a white dotted edge. I figured they'd look cute together, so I used the cheaters trick of making the loops and tying them off with a string or ribbon and then I stacked the two bows and put a strip of the navy blue ribbon in the center to finish the bow. I tied it in the back and was left with enough to tie it onto the wreath.

I tried the ribbon in a few different spots and decided I liked it on the top point, but not at the top of the wreath. I fed the ends of the ribbon used to create the center of the bow through the wreath and tied it to the cross wire.

Though I wished I had more colors of denim, I think it turned out cute. I was also able to make it with recycled materials and ribbons I had in my stash for years, which makes it even better! So for $1.25 (plus old ribbons), I've got a cute summer wreath.