Craft Tutorial: Vintage Inspired Knit Fall Wreath

Weren’t we just wearing sundresses last week? It’s been raining here in the Bay Area, and I’m in the mood for something cozy. Time for a new wreath to welcome the fall season.

I’m also in the mood for something serene as well as vintage-inspired. How did I combine fall, warm, peaceful, and vintage? The result was this wreath:

I finger-knitted the body of the wreath, and stenciled a fall-looking motif on top of some sheet music (I chose Autumn from The Four Seasons by Vivaldi, one of my favorite pieces). Then to finish, I added some vintage button accents.

Here’s how I made my Vintage Inspired Knit Fall Wreath.

Materials

For the Body of the Wreath:

• A chunky yarn (I used Red Heart Light n Lofty in Cape Cod)
• A wreath form that you can purchase, make from a piece of cardboard (like I did for this birthday wreath or this summer wreath), or in this case I used the inside of a thrifted embroidery hoop.
• Your fingers. Use your own. Don’t get on the bus and start weaving yarn on someone else’s fingers. They might not like it. And, who knows where their fingers have been. Eew.

For the Sheet Music Medallion:

• A piece of sheet music (I printed out mine from here)
• Martha Stewart Paints stencil set (large size, in Tapestry)
• Martha Stewart Paints in Gold (Metallic) and Chestnut Brown (Satin)
• Martha Stewart Paints Pouncer Sponge Brushes
• Brewed tea, cooled (optional…see directions*)
• Thin cardboard (like from a cereal box)
• Mod Podge (I used matte)
• Foam brush
• Bias tape
• Jute twine
• Strong tape (I used packing tape)

For the Vintage Button Accent:

• Vintage buttons
• Needle and thread
• Scrap of fabric
• Glue
• Thin cardboard
• Jute twine
• Strong tape

Directions

Body of the Wreath

I chose a chunky yarn to make my finger-knitted strip for the body of the wreath. I had this yarn on hand from a scarf my mom was trying to teach me to make (with actual knitting needles). Trying to teach me=I’m not too good at “real” knitting. So I’m finger-knitting, something I did a lot as a kid. To refresh my memory, I found this finger knitting video that I pinned on Pinterest. I also finger-knitted this necklace. You can see the difference between that (using thin cord) and this thick, chunky yarn.

In this case, try not to stretch the strip as you knit. I know that’s what you usually do when you finger-knit. But you want to be able to cover your wreath form, so I kept it wide.

Keep knitting until it’s the length of your wreath form’s circumference.

 

To attach the knitting to my embroidery hoop, I just tied it with strips of the same yarn. They blend in and you can barely see it. You’ll have a tail at the beginning and end of your knitting, which you can use to tie the ends to the wreath as well.

Medallion

Note: At first, I was going to make a rounder, larger medallion. But in the end, the scale was way off so I went with a slimmer, smaller one. The following pictures are with the original, larger medallion. I didn’t retake pics making the skinnier one. Sorry if this causes any confusion!

First I printed out my sheet music. It was free, and easy to find just by googling the music I wanted.Then I centered the stencil on the music sheet. I used the metallic paint as the main paint, and used accent colors to lightly cover the edges of the stencil. In this stencil, there were some leaves on the side which i thought would be nice for fall (one of the reasons why I originally chose this stencil).

Note: For the stencil I ended up using, I used the same metallic paint, plus the chestnut brown satin paint along the edges.

Now here’s where the brewed tea comes in. I printed my music onto a piece of white paper but I wanted to make it vintage-y. So I brushed the brewed tea onto the paper after the stencil paint dried. Then you can use a hair dryer to speed up the drying…this also makes the paper a little crinkly which is fun. *You can skip this step if you’re using actual vintage sheet music, or if you print it on some parchment-like paper.

Then I cut out around the stencil, leaving about 1/2 an inch from the widest parts. Cut a piece of thin cardboard as a backing. If you didn’t cut the stencil big enough (as I did) cut the cardboard a little bit bigger. This will give you room for the bias tape trim. Use Mod Podge to adhere the sheet music to the cardboard.

For the original medallion, I used two colors of bias tape that I ruffled on my sewing machine. This was the point where I didn’t like the medallion anymore for this wreath. It was moving away from the serene, peaceful feeling I wanted. I will probably save this for something else, because it is still pretty and fun.

So now I’m making the new, smaller medallion. Here I’m working on the back of the new medallion. I Mod Podged some paper on the back of the medallion so you don’t see “Cheerios” on the back, and then wrapped a single color of bias tape around the edges. Then to attach it to the wreath, I simply taped some jute twine to the back and tied it on.

Muuuuuch better, but it still needs a little something more.

Vintage button accents

So I poured out my jar of vintage buttons and found some of these shiny pearly ones, plus some gold ones. I sewed them into a rosette formation onto a piece of scrap fabric.

Then I trimmed off the fabric and cut out a little piece of thin cardboard on the back so the buttons don’t flop around.

And again, used tape and jute to tie it onto the wreath on either side of the medallion.

All done.

I’m ready for a comfy cozy fall.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial, and hope you are having a nice fall season so far!

PS I was inspired by this book page wreath by Jenn @ Rook No. 17 to use the music sheet on my wreath. I chose Vivaldi’s Autumn from The Four Seasons because I wanted this music played at our end-of-August wedding, but it couldn’t be played on an organ (the church had one of those huge, beautiful pipe organs). Glad to include this piece of music in my wreath.

Linking: Tip Junkie :: Rook No. 17 :: Tea Rose Home :: The Trendy Treehouse :: The Frugal Girls :: Tidy Mom :: Fingerprints on the Fridge :: WhipperBerry :: Creation Corner :: Tatertots and Jello :: Lolly Jane Boutique ::  Homemaker on a Dime :: The Gunny Sack :: born again crafter :: Centsational Girl

Disclosure: I received the Martha Stewart paints, stencils and tools to write this post. Click there for details.