Vehement Solutions for Trivial Problems: July 2016

I love the look of a garland hanging from the mantle to give a little touch of decoration or celebrate a holiday. Over the last year, I developed a series of garlands to hang at certain times of the year

My garland "adventure" started with Halloween. I bought yellow, orange and white felt and made candy corns, attaching them to a piece of ribbon.

Here is a link to the pattern I used, print on regular 8.5" x 11" paper:
Candy Corn Pattern

For the fall, I bought some inexpensive silk leaves at a craft store and sewed them to a ribbon, creating a fall leaf garland that took me through Thanksgiving.

I didn't make a garland for Christmas, since I put stockings up on the mantle then. For after Christmas, a snowflake garland seemed appropriate. I got these felt snowflakes online for cheap and stitched them together.

For Valentine's Day, I drew a bunch of hearts using a cookie cutter on a remnant of wool felt I had, and then sewed the hearts together with some spacing on my sewing machine.

Next up, for Easter, I did a garland of yellow Peeps, using felt leftover from the candy corn garland. Here is the link to a pattern I found on this website:
http://www.madeeveryday.com/

Peep pattern

For the summer, I wanted something a bit nautical, so I ordered inexpensive sand dollars and starfish from the internet and sewed them to a rope length I bought at a hardware store.

Finally, I decided we should have a garland at the family's cabin, so I bought some cheap used fishing bobbers off of Ebay and sewed them to some rope. This was later "lost to time" (thrown out by someone who didn't love the aesthetic).