While tidying up in my studio today I came across a bag of felt strips leftover from a chain
garland I made for our Christmas tree a couple of years ago. That garland has since gotten a bit stretched out and doesn't look so great anymore, so I thought I'd make another this year out of the scraps. This project took me a little over an hour to make, and because the little squares are easier to roll up for storage than the chain was, I hope this will have a longer lifespan.
Here's what I did:
Unless you have a bag of wadded up pre-cut felt strips lying around, you'll have to start by making some. Using sheets of craft felt (or real wool felt if you're feeling rich and/or fancy), use a rotary cutter or scissors to slice up the felt into strips an inch wide.
Iron your strips (if needed) and line them up in the order you'd like your colors to go. You can put them together totally randomly, of course, but I wanted mine to be in a repeat of the colors above.
If you have a big self-healing mat and a rotary cutter, you'll be able to line up your strips and cut them into one inch squares lickety split. If you need to cut by hand with scissors, go ahead and eyeball the size of the squares and cut a few strips at a time. It took me just a few minutes to do it with a mat and cutter, like so:
First I squared the ends of each side so they were all exactly 9" across.
Then I whizzed down the rows following my lines, nine times, til I had...
...this.
Then I started feeding them through my sewing machine, lining up a few at a time, and making sure that each subsequent square got caught under the presser foot as close to the one before it as possible. Once a square was caught under the foot, I could just keep feeding the next one in, til the next thing I knew I had...
...this. I did three batches of ten 9" strips, so had a total of 180 squares which makes a 15' long chain. If it isn't big enough for our tree, it'll take me no time to whip up another one.
Here it is hanging up in my studio. We haven't gotten our Christmas tree yet, but, lucky us-there is a Christmas tree farm here on the farm. Once we get ours up and decorated I'll add another photo of this garland in its rightful place.
