Crafty Corner: Felt Holly Garland

There is nothing like holiday decorations to put me in a festive mood. It’s even better when I’ve crafted them myself. We dug out the box of Christmas decorations from the basement last week and I realized I’ve had the same stash for a really long time. Time for something new, fresh, and fun!

Project materials:

• Nine pieces of felt (3 light green, 3 dark green, 3 dark red – or any colors you like)
• Hot Glue Gun
• Scissors
• 4 Binder Clips
• Thread (ideally one that matches the darkest color felt)
• Sewing Machine

I started by making three patterns on a plain piece of white paper: a holly leaf, small circle, and big circle. My plan was to make a garland of holly leaves with matching color circles between them.

I then fastened four pieces of felt together with the binder clips and traced on the pattern. I recommend tracing on the light green felt so the lines are easy to see. With the felt batched together, I could be more efficient while cutting out the shapes. The binder clips really help hold everything together while cutting.

Finished circles and leaves. Also, felt carnage.

Next, I set up an assembly line to make my hot gluing quicker and safer.

I glued two different color leaves overlapping slightly, with two holly berries glued to the top.

Holly jolly holly leaves! Let them sit for 5 minutes to make sure all of the hot glue has cooled and set.

Next I laid out all of the pieces in the order I wanted them on the garland. This helped me get a sense of layout and length. Each garland had 33 circles and 10 holly leaves. I made 3 garland strands in total.

Time to sew! I simply fed each circle, back to back, through the sewing machine. It was quite easy, felt acts very similar to cotton when sewing.

When I got to the holly leaves, I sewed directly through the top so the garland would be weighted evenly. Be careful when doing this though, my sewing machine needle got a little sticky from all the glue in there.

I repeated until I had sewed all of the pieces together. I made sure to leave a bit of excess thread at the beginning and end of each strand to help me hang them up.

All done! I hung one garland in our living room window, one in the kitchen,

and one in my cube at the office!

I love the way this garland turned out – super cute and really festive. I’ve gotten a bunch of compliments so far too. I can’t wait to make more garland like this in the future for other special occasions!