How to Make a Braided Hoop Wreath | Shabby Fabrics At Home

Welcome to the At Home Studio. My name's Chase, and I am so glad you guys could join me today to create something that is just perfect for summertime. It looks beautiful on your front porch. Let me show you what we're making. We are making this summer hoop wreath. And this is a variation of the spring blooms hoop wreath that we made a few weeks ago, this beautiful springtime one with these floral elements. This one is more natural looking. It goes with a lot of your decor. It's the perfect way to greet guests that you have in your home. The first thing they see when they walk through your front door. It's just beautiful and actually very easy to make. We are putting this in a kit for all of you to make it just that much easier to make this. You don't need your long supply lists of all of your lists that you need for your supplies to make this. We make it so easy for you just right at your front door. So I will show you what we're going to need for this. You will need a hot glue gun and scissors for this. And then we'll also include your hoop wreath and some cording to make this along with the green felt and ribbon. The pattern is sold separately for those of you that are wanting to make several different wreaths like you did with the spring blooms one. If you haven't checked out this video yet, make sure you go and watch it. And we'll get started. So the first thing that we're going to do is you're going to cut your cord here. And so this is a little bit long. But what we're going to do is we're going to cut nine pieces that are about a yard and a half to two yards each. I use about a yard and a half to make this one. However, everyone braids it a little bit differently. And so you might want to account for two yards just to make it easier for if you braid differently than I do. And what you're going to do is you're going to then get a piece of duct tape. This is going to help us hold that cording down to braid nice and perfectly as we're going down. So we're going to take our nine cords here and they are long, but it will get easier to braid as you go along. And what we're going to do is we're going to take three of the cords, get them nice and even, and we're going to set them down here. Untangle them because they are a little bit long. It'd be nice if you have a longer table to work with for your workspace so you have lots of room here. Then you're going to take three more and group them together and put them in the middle here, just like so. And then your last three duct tape out of the way and line it up right there. And then we can scooch them together just a little bit. And what we're going to do to keep these in place when we braid them, we're going to take that piece of duct tape and we're just going to layer it directly on top there like so. So now you have your three pieces of three each, and you're just going to start simply braiding these all the way down. So we're going to take our strands here and we're just going to overlap. And as we're braiding these, we're trying to make sure that we're keeping them straight. We're not overlapping any of the cords. And we're just going to keep going down. We're going to loosen up the braid later as we go. And so you don't need to worry about it being nice and tight or loose at this point, just your normal braid. You can, you know, fix it at the end here based on your preference of how thick or thin you would like it. And we're just going to continue down the line braiding here. OK, so once you're done finishing your braid here, what we're going to do is we're just going to leave that end and we're going to begin loosening it a little bit to give it more of a chunkier appearance here. So how you do that is you're going to take your braid and you're just going to slightly pull the two ends of it apart just to make it a little bit thicker. This is just your preference. If you like it thinner, you don't have to do this step. I like mine to have a little bit more thickness to it. So you're just going to pull the sides and keep going down the line here until it's just a little bit thicker. And that way, it also covers more space on your embroidery hoop, so you have more space to work with. We're just going to ignore the ends of it for now, because we will cover it up in later steps when we're gluing on the greenery. So no need to worry about what it looks like at the end. Just braid all the way down to the end and make sure you're pulling evenly. So that way it's even all the way across the hoop. You don't have any braids that are braided parts that are thinner or larger than the other. So once you have those pulled out to your preference, you can then take your duct tape and undo this here. And we are going to then glue it on to our hoop wreath. If you have some excess here, you can also braid it. Like I said, we're going to hide this at the end. And so you don't need to go all the way to the end, but you just want to make sure you have enough braided. And then we're going to take our hoop wreath and we're going to begin gluing it onto there. So before I get started with that, I'm going to take my parchment paper that I use for almost every craft just because it's so nice. It's extra large and it's so easy to clean up any messes, especially with the glue gun. When it drips down, you can just take it right off. It doesn't get on any of your workspace and then just easy cleanup. So I'm going to set it on this parchment paper here, and then I'm going to grab my braid, making sure that it's not coming loose. And all we're going to do is I'm just going to apply glue here to the hoop itself. And then I'm going to start with where the braid begins here and just apply it to that glue, making sure that I'm evenly covering the hoop wreath. So that way you're not having some a little bit, you know, off center than the other as you're going around. And it's keeping its shape. Just continue to glue. This glue gun is fantastic. If you don't already have it, it is a fine tip glue gun. And this is so nice when you're working with projects that require a little bit more of a fine tip, like how we're going around this border here. And make sure you're getting a nice, thin, even line. Traditional glue guns, you can't control it as well with the glue. And this one is fantastic. So we're just going to continue to go along. We also have the full size glue sticks that are 10 inches long. So you don't ever have to or you don't have to replace the glue sticks as frequently as some of them that are smaller. You don't have to spend a lot of time doing that. It helps you complete your projects quicker. So we're going to go all the way along here and then where it ends. We're just simply going to cut off the ends here. Like I said, we're going to put the greenery here so it doesn't need to completely match. But this is where we're going to end it is just like here. I need a little bit more glue on this end. I can tell it's not completely flat. There we go. And then we're just going to continue gluing it down. So it's nice and secure. Any pieces that come loose here, you can just take them and glue them to the sides. But you're going to, like I said, put greenery down on top of this as well. So it will be nice and secure. All right. So the next thing that we're going to do, because you can see this wreath here, it has some dimension to it. We have our leaves laying flat, but then we also have wires that are hidden in here that allows these top pieces with thinner leaves on it to just stand out a little bit more, gives it more dimension to it. So it's not just directly flat onto the wreath here. Just a little extra touch. So we've included some wires in your kit here, and I cut mine down a little bit. I cut mine to about 14 inches. But again, this is a preference if this is customizable. So if you'd like your greenery to go up just a little bit more, you can leave them at the length that they're at. But I stopped mine a little bit shorter. And so I'm going to cut mine down to allow for that. So the next thing that we're going to do is we're going to take our floral wires here and we're just going to slightly twist them together a little bit to create kind of like an X here. And then what we're going to do is we're going to apply some hot glue down and we're going to set it onto the wreath. And then we're going to cover it up with some leaves later. So we're just going to leave this here and let it here. And I will show you how we're going to make our leaves. So we also included some green felt for you to use for your leaves. It's a nice, fresh greenery. The great thing about felt is it provides texture and gives it a nice shape and it has just this really pretty color to it. And then you don't have to worry about any of your greenery, you know, dying because it just stays that way all the time. So how we make our felt leaves is we use these acrylic leaf templates and I cannot recommend these enough. So these are custom designed by Shabby Fabrics at home. And these are the best for making any of your floral shapes, leaf shapes. We also have them available in a floral template. And what these are is they're made out of acrylic, so they're nice and sturdy and it makes it so when you're tracing shapes over and over again, you're not having it warped like normal paper does. When you are tracing your shapes, it makes it perfect every single time. They're nice and small so you can just keep them, you know, on hand. We have them in four different sizes and we also have the petal shapes available. If you would like to add any floral elements to this, you definitely can. We use them quite a bit in our spring blooms one, but today we're just going to use the leaf one. So we're going to take our leaves here and we're going to start included in your pattern. We will give you a diagram that shows you the best way to utilize your space on your sheet of felt. But the basics of it is you're taking your acrylic template, you're putting it down onto your felt and you're taking your friction pen. So for those of you not familiar with a friction pen, this is the best thing ever because you can mark your shapes on here, but the ink is erasable with heat. And so any lines that you get out of line or it isn't quite the shape you want it to be, you can just erase it with heat. And so it's just like a magic eraser here just disappears with heat applied to it. So you're just going to simply trace around the shape. And I'm just going to do a few here and show you. And you're going to rotate your sizes. Like I said, the figure in your pattern will show you the best way to utilize your felt. And when I go to cut these out, I'm using the Caron K Buckley scissors. I use these frequently. It gives you just the perfect cut every time, especially with this felt. You need kind of a with this thicker material. You need need some good scissors and these ones are great for it. So when I cut these leaves out, I cut them just slightly in between the line here. So that way I'm not leaving marks on the leaf itself. But if you did leave a mark, you could just apply heat to it. You could take the tip of your glue gun and it would just disappear. So I'm just going slightly inside the lines here and we cut out our leaf shape and you're just going to keep going until you have a supply of leaves cut out an arrangement of small, medium, large, extra large. And then you're going to organize them by size. And we give you the exact numbers in your pattern of how many we use for this wreath. The next step is after you cut them out, you're going to begin to apply glue and make these thinner leaves. So for these thinner leaves that you see on the floral wires here, we cut them a little bit differently. So we're going to take about 10 or so of our medium or large leaves and we're simply just going to cut them in half, just like so. And this gives us a smaller leaf shape. We're going to, like I said, cut out about 10 of those to have on hand to apply to these wires here that just gives it added dimension. And after you have those cut out, we can begin applying the hot glue and forming the leaf shapes. So to do that, we're going to take a leaf here and we're going to apply a dot of hot glue to the bottom of each leaf. And then we're just going to pinch and hold until the glue has set. You don't need to hold it for a while, but just make sure it's nice and secure. So that way it doesn't open up on you and then we'll set it aside and you can organize them by size. So that way, when you're putting together or assembling your wreath here, you can easily grab what size you think would fit best in that space. For these smaller ones, you're going to do the same thing, the ones that we cut in half. We're going to apply a dot of hot glue here and then just pinch it at the bottom. And it just makes a skinnier leaf here, opposed to the thicker leaves that will just give it a different shape, more dimension. So once you have all of your leaves cut out and organized by size and glued them all together, what we're going to do next is we're going to grab our wreath that we set aside for the time being. And we're going to make sure our wires here are glued on nice and tight now that it's set. And we're going to start with our smaller leaves that we made here. We're going to apply them to the wires. And what we're going to do is we're going to apply glue to the side of a leaf here. And we're going to just attach it to the wire itself and hold until it's set. And with these wires, you can now bend them since it is glued on. I would still hold it at the center and tell later steps will make it even more secure. But you can alter them, bend them so that way they stay in place when you are making this. And then we'll take another one and we're just going to continue layering them onto the stem here. So I'm going to put one underneath this one on a different side. We're rotating sides that this is on the wire. I will show you guys with one more so you can just see how it's going directly up here. And we'll do one more to the side. So you're just going to continue going upwards until all of these smaller leaves are set on all four of these wires. And they're going to look like this one here, how these are a little bit upwards and with smaller leaves shape here. And then what we're going to do is we're going to fill it in with our larger leaves to hide the wires a little bit more and to make it so it goes up on the wreath here. So how you're going to do that is, again, just applying the glue to the leaf itself. And we're going to glue it directly on to the wreath and just keep going upwards into a formation of your preference. And you can keep adding leaves until it is full as you desire. We're going to just keep applying the glue to make sure that these wires are a little bit more secure and hidden. What I'm going to do is I'm going to glue a leaf just directly on top of it here so we can apply glue to the wire itself or onto the leaf. I just applied it to the wire just so I know exactly where it's going to go. And you can just cover it just like so. And this is going to help secure the wire and also hide it. And we'll just continue to fill this in until it goes all the way up to your preference until you have a wreath that looks similar to this one here where you have all four of your wires filled with leaves and then also all of your leaves applied in whatever formation you would prefer. And I went about about a quarter of a way up. You could go halfway up, whatever you prefer. And after this, we're going to then apply our ribbon, which is going to hide some of the greenery even more. And so to do that, we're going to take our burlap ribbon here. We're going to just simply tie it around here. I like to do one knot first because it hides the greenery a little bit more. And then I kind of adjust the burlap ribbon here to widen it a little bit, to hide the the wires and some of the greenery elements a little bit more. And then I'm going to just tie my ribbon around it and just adjust the ribbon to make however big of a bow you would like. I like to have my ribbon hang down a little bit. A medium sized bow. And then it just hangs down like so. If you'd like to add these little touches to the end of your ribbon, like I did here. All you're going to do is you'll take the end of your ribbon and you can just cut slits into it to make this fun little shape at the end. So we're just going to cut one slit diagonally here and meet it to the other end. And you just have a nice slit to get those little strands there. Just a nice little added touch to your ribbon here. So like I said, this wreath is super simple and easy to make, but it really is just beautiful. I love the look of this braid around it. Just add some extra or some extra warmth to it. It's a very neutral wreath, so it looks great with any decor that you already have outside of your home. The perfect way to greet any guests or when you come home, you just see this beautiful wreath on your door. So thank you for joining me. We'll see you next time. However, in the meantime, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel and also follow along on the At Home with Shabby Instagram page and Pinterest. It is at home with Shabby. And if you make any of our projects, make sure you're tagging us in them using the hashtag at home with Shabby. Thank you.