Natural looking leaf garland is a beautiful way to decorate for a green wedding. It is a handmade creation that is not difficult, although you do need time to put it all together. It involves fantastic thrift store searching, felting, cutting and sewing, and anyone can carry out this lovely DIY decorating idea.
Feel good not only about reducing and reusing, but taking a creative role in the design of your wedding decor. This garland is so versatile that it can be used over and over. It is such a simple yet beautiful accent.
We shall have this decorating idea on hand at The Grassroots Wedding Fair.
Step 1:
Take a trip to your local thrift store. You are looking for 100% wool sweaters in your wedding colours. If you can find old vintage sweaters the better. They have to be 100% wool to felt properly. Choose 1-3 sweaters to start and feel free to mix colours.
Step 2:
Wash your sweaters in hot water. If you have a washing machine bag or even a pillow case place the sweaters inside the bag. Place tennis balls in your washer if you have any. Otherwise wash the sweaters with jeans. The sweaters need to be agitated and balls in the washer work really well.
Some sweaters may have to be washed more than once. Place in the dryer and you should have lovely pulverized felted material to work with.
Even if your sweater does not felt perfectly you can still cut out your leaves. Try a few and decide if you can still use them.
3. Cut sweater into strips and then start cutting out your leaves.
4. Sew the leaves by hand or by machine so that they form a chain. You have options here. You can sew long stitches by hand through the leaves, with one stitch per leaf, or you can sew the leaves end to end, but this will include a lot of stopping and starting. The other method is to simply run them through your sewing machine, slowly, one after another until you reach your desired length.
Try decorating your leaves with various stitches of different colours or sew two leaves together of different colours and stitch rip out sections between the stitches.
5. Hang and stand back in awe at your lovely creation.
This garland can be adapted to almost any type of floral creation. If you have a summer wedding, try simple flower cutouts in bright colours. For a fall wedding, choose an array of reds, oranges and greens.
