Cut Now, Measure Later : Garlands, Garlands, Everywhere

Hello everyone!

Happy last Friday of March!

Today, we'll be having some fun with.....

Felt Garlands!

I love garlands of all shapes and sizes.

I pretty much just love celebrating things.

Birthdays, graduations, holidays, seasons... You name it, and I'll hang something on the wall to celebrate it! :)

I've seen garlands like this all over Etsy and Pinterest.... Check some examples out here:

Felt Circle Garland

Felt Rectangle Garland

One Year Subscription for Garlands (It can be yours for only $127.50) ;)

Feeling Inspired?

Good!

When you're working with a sturdy material like felt, you're really only limited by your imagination and your patience with cutting shapes over and over again.

So, here we go!

What you'll need for this project:

-Felt

-Sharp scissors

-Sewing machine and thread

I started by pulling out all of my leftover felt to see what colors spoke to me.

I decided to make a rainbow rectangle garland first. :)

(Think about it... garland... Judy Garland... Somewhere over the Rainbow...

it only makes sense, right?) :)

Ok, the first thing I did was cut out the rectangles. I wanted the rectangles to be close in size, but each varying slightly.

The number of shapes you need to cut out will vary depending on the desired length of your garland.
(Or you can just cut until your cutting hand starts to cramp... that was my method.)

Once you have cut out your shapes, you're ready to sew!

You can make the garland with or without space between each felt piece. This is entirely up to you!

For the rainbow garland, I wanted a little bit of space between each piece.

Pull 6-12" of thread out of the machine before starting, so that you can have thread to tie this side of the garland.

Now you're ready to sew!
Sew the first piece, and after it passes under the presser foot, keep your foot on the pedal (keep the same pace) while pulling gently on the piece you just sewed. With my foot on the pedal, I counted to 2 before feeding in the next piece. (If you want more space between pieces, count longer, and vice-versa.) :)

**To be honest, I was not at all confident that this would work, but I was pleasantly surprised! ;)

Now, keep it up!

When you're done, pull extra thread again, cut......

...and you're DONE! Easy as pie!

So, now you have the technique, and the possibilities are limitless!

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Next, I decided to make a circle garland. I traced a small circle onto a piece of chipboard for these.

Planning any graduation parties this year? Why not make some felt garlands in the colors of your favorite graduate's Alma Mater?

My not-so-little brother will be graduating from a pretty fantastic school this May:

I think garnet and black are some of the most beautiful colors. :)

For this garland, I didn't want any space between the circles, so I fed the circles as closely together as possible under the presser foot.

Lovely! You can hang several strands vertically or hang it horizontally across a doorway, window, mantle... whatever you like!

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Next, we will be celebrating one of our niece's birthdays on the same day as her dad's birthday with a "Beards and Butterflies" birthday party.

So, naturally, we need to make some garlands to suit!

For the butterfly garland, I made a butterfly template by first making a heart, then tracing it twice to make a symmetrical butterfly.

Follow the same cutting and sewing process, and you're done!

These will need some kind of antennae, but that will be a project for another day. ;)

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Next, came the "beards".... or, mustaches.

Since mustaches are so popular now, I took advantage of the number of mustache illustrations available on Google images. :)

For the mustache garland, I traced two mustaches then made a template of each with chipboard. After that, it was just a matter of cutting out way too many mustaches.

Ready to celebrate!

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The last garland on my list to make was a star garland with large and small stars.

I made a template and started cutting.

Cut and sew again!

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I thought I was done at this point.... but then the crazy kicked in....

I looked at the stars, and then I looked at my circle templates, and it came to me....

THE SOLAR SYSTEM!

Of course! ;) Who doesn't need a Solar System garland??

Well, I don't, but I decided to make it anyways!

This is a good time to use up your felt scraps!

Here are my felt pieces before I glued down any of the details*....

*Yes, I know Pluto isn't a planet anymore. But, come on, he's been a part of my planet-loving life for so long....It just felt wrong to exclude him from the felt party.

After gluing, it's time to sew! Just like before!

Now, I wish I had put more space between the planets. I was so nervous that the pieces would fall apart while I was sewing, that I may have rushed it a bit. :) Oh well!