Sweater Wreath

Yesterday I posted for the first time in a while and wanted to give a little bit of explanation as to why I haven't been around.  I really appreciate the kind comments.  I hope I didn't leave anyone with the impression that I've been sitting around in my house robe drinking schnapps alone all winter.  Normally I like to constantly have a project of some sort going and recently I just haven't been super motivated to do them.  Any time and extra energy has gone to running Babe Jr around and keeping mud out of the house.  It's been a rainy winter.  But a really awesome thing came out of that post.  I linked up to a blog party I came across, on DIY by Design appropriately titled Winter Blues Wednesday.  One of the other entries was this super cute Valentine Sweater Wreath.  I was so excited when I saw it, I pinned it immediately and ran around gathering things to start a new project.

Ta daaa!!

I've seen wreathes made with pool noodles online a lot recently.  I've had an extra piece of pipe insulation squirreled away just for this purpose.  By squirreled away, I mean, its been laying behind my trash bins outside since Mr Backwoods used some to cover our water lines around the pump and under the house.  The piece I had was about the same size as a pool noodle.  I just needed half so I used a steak knife to saw it in two. 

I have a bin of clothes Babe Jr has outgrown in our storage room; I knew there were several sweaters and scarves.  For my wreath I used the sleeves of 2 sweaters (mine were kids size 8, the other blogger used adult sweater sleeves) 3 scarves, and a couple of fuzzy socks.  I had to cut the toes out of the socks to slide them over the noodle, the scarves are just tied on.  I spent the most time arranging the order of the scraps because I wasn't really sure how many I would need.  I really like that I had a variety of colors so this can stay on the door past Valentine's day.

 I was afraid packing tape alone wouldn't hold the shape of my wreath since the circle was fairly small and that foam stuff is tough.  This piece was hollow in the middle since its meant to cover pipes, I'm not sure if pool noodles are or not.  But I straightened out a wire hanger and ran it through the middle then twisted the ends together tightly with pliers.  Then I taped the foam ends together over the wire.  The wire hanger gave me the ability to bend the whole thing and shape it just the way I wanted.  Once I had it secure, I used the last scarf that had not been cut to tie the bow right over the seam.

I'm so happy with how it turned out, and even more so that I had all the materials on hand.  Yay for being thrifty and using what you've got!!