Remembrance Day Wreath

It’s no secret that I love October and I love Christmas. I love to decorate for both of those events. However between the two big decoration times comes Remembrance Day here in Canada.

As much as I love Christmas I refuse to decorate until after November 11.  It is something small but something that I do every year to honor our veterans.

This year I was wanting to do something to show my appreciation for them so I thought about making a wreath for our outside welcome sign holder.

Onto Pinterest I went and found…nothing. That’s right nothing that really appealed to me. The only thing that I found that would work was these cute little poppies. http://diaryoftwocraftygirls.blogspot.ca/2011/11/rememberance-day-poppy-tutorial.html

So Sunday after church I headed to walmart to try and find some red felt. They had blue, tan and pink, no red. So I came up with plan B. I bought 2m of red flannel.

This morning I was excited to get started on my project so I right away sat down, figured out what size my poppies would be and started cutting one out. Quickly found some brown flannel for a center and fell in love with the result.

I should also add now that this post is picture crazy.

I then figured out what size my wreath would be as to decide how many poppies I needed to make. This took a big of finagling, but I managed to come up with a size I liked.

Next cutting out and making the poppies.

First I marked all the circles out on the material.

 

Next I cut to cut them all out. Fun times I tell you. 🙂

A nice pile of flannel circles.

Then I laid out how many I needed.

Then I grabbed one of the circles and folded it in half.

And then in half again.

I did this 3 more times. Then I grabbed one of the backing circles and started laying them around.

All around.

Continuing my way around the circle with the ‘petals’

Then since I have a sewing machine handy I stitched around the center.

 I did this for all the flowers.

My pile of poppies waiting their center.

Then I grabbed my brown flannel cut out a strip and cut the strip into blocks.

Each of these blocks I roughly cut out into a circle. I didn’t want them to be perfect. After all this was a homemade craft. Haha

Then I simply placed one center on each flower, and sewed around the center again.

My poppies awaiting the wreath.

I decided to make a cross wreath as I really wanted way to honor the lives lost.

So I quickly made up a cardboard base on which to attach the poppies.

I simply stapled the two pieces together.

Not professional in any means.

Then out came the glue gun.

I arranged the poppies on the cross how I wanted them.

Put a dab of glue on the back of the poppy and pressed it down onto the cardboard cross.

Then I grabbed a piece of elastic, stapled it together and glued it onto the back of the cross.

And voila done!!

Outside on my welcome sign holder.

I probably should have picked up the sign part before the pic. Oops. Keeping it real.

I actually really like it. I would have preferred to use something other than cardboard and maybe after hubby comes home from camp I will make something more permanent. I will keep you posted if I do.

Also so sorry for the very poor picture quality. These were taken with my phone and it is a very dreary day outside.