How to Make A Christmas Rag Wreath Easy

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Learn how to make a Christmas Rag Wreath! Cheap Christmas Decorations that look great and are fabulous for the environment! We also love Recycled Christmas Crafts, so these Rag Rug Wreaths are perfect!

A few weeks ago the lovely Elspeth from Ragged Life contacted me and invited me along to one of her Rag Rug making workshops. I remembered making similar Rag Rugs when I was little and at school and immediately wanted to revive my rag rug know how. So course accepted to come along. After some to-ing and fro-ing Elspeth actually came to my house and organised a wonderful Rag Rug Workshop for myself and fellow bloggers! How lucky was that?!

And as it was Christmas, we thought the ideal thing to make would be one of  these Shaggy Rag Rug Christmas Wreaths. Aren’t they wonderful? and the best bit, is that they are made form old, no longer wanted or sale-able t-shirts and clothes. A perfect upcycled project for those of us on the “Recycled Christmas” mission.

Elspeth runs Rag Rug workshops in the Great London area, but also blogs at Ragged Life and has some Rag Rug tools for sale in her ebay shop and Rag Rug products on Etsy (LOVE the letters). She also has some Rag Rug How To Videos on youtube!

How to make a Christmas Rag Wreath

Today, I will give you a quick intro into Shaggy Rag Rug Making and how to make this wreath. There are links to additional instructions and videos to make it easier for you!

Shaggy Rag Rug Wreath - Recycled Christmas

Christmas Rag Rug Wreath – Materials:

  • Your Rag Rug Tools – a hook, cutting block – you can get some of Elspeth’s here
  • Hessian
  • Fabric scissors
  • Some poster board (as a backing)
  • LOTS of rags in desired colours
  • Staple Gun for mounting

How to make a Shaggy Rag Rug Wreath – The Basics!

how to Rag Rug

Here we have the lovely Elspeth showing us the basics!

Prepping your Christmas Wreath Base

Step-2-600x400

1) Begin by prepping your Hessian. Draw the the OUTER  and then INNER circles of your “final” wreath first. These are the 2nd and 3rd circles in the above. You then need to draw another circle 3cm from the outside and the inside circles – this is your hem and is very important, as it will stop your hessian from falling apart. You need to hem this circles. See more photos and step by steps instructions for drawing and hemming your hessian.

Luckily for us, Elsbeth did this for us!

Prepping your Rag Wreath FabricHow to Rag Rug - the basics

2) Now to prep your fabric. Cut long strips from your fabric. Don’t worry about cutting these “perfectly”. Rag Rug Making is very forgiving.

3) Use the cutting tool to wrap your fabric and then cut. Make sure you only wrap one layer of fabric, if you do several layers, you end up with uneven lengths. This will ensure that you have pieces all the same length (ish)

4) Start Rag Rugging.. the video below shows you the basics for a Shaggy Rag Rug

How to make a basic Rag Rug Hoop

Video: How to do a Shaggy Rag Rug

5) Got it? Great. You are ready to go. For the Rag Rug Wreath it is great to have an uneven number of flowers. I choose 5. Start with the centres of your flowers first. It is useful to have a contrasting colour in the centre. Elspeth used some golden Sweetie Wrappers (4 of them) which looked great. I had a very thick yellow fabric, so used 3 rags per flower centre.

NOTE: it is important that you keep working round and round your Christmas wreath or project. Don’t do one half first and then the other half, as you are likely to find that you RUN OUT OF COLOURS OR FABRICS. By dotting your fabric around you get an even feel. So. I did my yellows first. Then I did a stripy red, then a light red, then a darker one… but I worked on all 5 flowers at the same time. I repeated the same with my greens.

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Elspeth’sPhoto shows us what the back of your wreath is likely to look like. Don’t worry about filling EVERY square. Or it being too even.

How to Mount your Rag Wreath

rag rug wreaths - recycled christmas

6) You are now ready to mount your wreath. Basically you just staple gun it down – but work on alternative sides, so you can stretch the hessian evenly. Again, head over to Ragged Life for more photos and steps.

How to Make a Rag Rug Wreath

7) Ta da! My Upcycled Wreath is FINISHED! What do you think?! I have had it up on my door a week and have already  received lots of compliments!!

Hope you enjoyed this recycled Christmas Wreath project! Isn’t it wonderful?!

More great Christmas Crafts here:

More Recycled Christmas Crafts here: