Sequined Poinsettia Yarn Wreath

I had a lot of fun creating my Fall Yarn Wreath, so naturally I was feeling pretty gung ho about topping myself for Christmas. I love poinsettias, so I wanted to be sure to include those, but I wanted some glitz and sparkle for the holidays. What I wound up with is an ivory yarn wreath decked out with sequined felt poinsettias, a felt mitten and glittery lettering spelling out "Joyeux Noel" ~ French for Happy Christmas!

What you'll need ~

Styrofoam wreath form (10″ - 12″)
Ivory yarn (I used Red Heart Super Saver acrylic yarn in Aran)
Red, green and gold sequins
Red and green felt
Red and green 6-strand embroidery floss
Chipboard letters (I used K&Company Yuletide Chipbox)

Scissors
Needle
Hot glue
Template for poinsettia & mitten (click here to download)
Freezer paper

How to make it ~

I started this project by wrapping the styrofoam wreath form with the yarn. Place a dot of hot glue on the back of the wreath form and attach an end of the yarn.

Once the glue is dry, start wrapping the yarn around the wreath. Once your wreath is completely covered in yarn, secure the other end with another dot of glue on the back of the wreath form. If you find any gaps, you can go back with short pieces of yarn to fill in the spaces.

Set your wreath aside for later ~ it's time to work on all the embellishments.

For the templates ~

If you're going to use our downloadable template, go ahead and print it out. Next, I took a piece of freezer paper and traced my shapes onto the paper side (not the shiny side) with a marker.

Cut the shapes out of the freezer paper. For each poinsettia you're making, you'll need two of the "red petals" shapes and one of the "green leaves" shapes. If you're making the mitten, too, you'll need two pieces.

To easily cut them out of the felt, place your freezer paper stencil shiny side down on the appropriate felt color, turn an iron on low heat and iron the paper for a few seconds. The freezer paper stencil should be sticking to the felt, so you can cut out the shape with sharp scissors, peel off the paper stencil and repeat as necessary.

For the poinsettias ~

Once you have all of your felt shapes cut out, you can start applying the sequins. Let me just say - I've always been one who insisted "But I can't sew!" Trust me, if I can sew on sequins, so can you!

You'll want to match your sequins and embroidery floss to the felt piece you're working on. I separated the embroidery floss into 3 strands so it would easily fit through the tiny little hole in the sequins. To do that, cut about a 3-foot length of the floss. Near the middle of the length, use both hands to separate the floss into two sections of 3 strands each. If you try to do this at the end of the floss, you'll wind up with a tangled mess. Just gently pull apart at the middle, and you'll have two sections!

Sewing sequins is fairly easy. Grab one of your felt shapes (either your red petals or your green leaves), and create your first stitch by placing a sequin near the edge of the felt, then coming up through the bottom of the felt and the center of the sequin with your needle, at least 1/8" away from the edges of the petal or leaf. Leave a tail on the bottom of about an inch. Next, you're going to stitch downward right at the very edge of the sequin, remaining parallel to the edge of the felt. See Figure 1 for a visual aid!

Now that your first sequin is in place, you can tie a quick little knot on the tail and continue.

For my poinsettias, I only sequined one of the red pieces - the one on the top - so there's a plain piece of red felt in between the green sequined leaves and the red sequined petals. You can do both if you want, but I wanted a little depth there.

Once you're done with all three pieces of your poinsettia, you can add some gold sequins to the center of the top layer (follow the same method and use about 6 gold sequins in a circular pattern) and then stitch all three layers together. For the best results, start with your green leaves pointing at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00. Then, place your plain red petals on top of that, rotating it about 45°. Your top layer, the sequined petals, will be just slightly offset from the green layer so that you can still see all the points. Once they're lined up the way you like it, stitch them together (you can come right up through the center of the gold sequins).

Make as many poinsettias as you want!

For the mitten ~

Again, you can use our template to make the felt mitten or just cut it out freehand - it's pretty easy to do! If you want a dimensional mitten, you'll need to cut out two shapes.

I used some of my little felt scraps to stuff inside the mitten since I don't normally have any kind of stuffing or polyfill around the house. Using the embroidery floss that matches your felt, just stitch both halves together with small, moderately tight stitches. This is easy after all those sequins!

For the letters ~

As I said in the materials list, I purchased sparkly chipboard letters as a time saver, but of course you can make your own if you'd prefer. I selected all the letters for my phrase of choice and then cut out little rectangles of felt to place behind them. I alternated between red and green and glued the letters on with hot glue, but again, do whatever suits you!

Finishing touches ~

Once all of your embellishments are complete (in my case, three sequined poinsettias, a mitten and my "Joyeux Noel" phrase), you can arrange them on your yarn wreath and affix them with hot glue.

If you have the patience and the desire to do so, I'm sure a wreath full of poinsettias would be beautiful, too! Enjoy and happy crafting!

--- This project was created by Erika Pitera, the managing editor and art director here at ZEST