How To Create An Easter Rag Wreath

These rag wreaths are so unique. You’ve probably seen them around in a variety of different colors for a variety of different holidays or seasons. Wanting an Easter wreath to display over the mantel, I decided to make an Easter rag wreath.

How To Choose Fabric Colors For An Easter Rag Wreath

For me, choosing the fabric colors is pretty easy for this Easter wreath. Another project involving painted Easter eggs and a grapevine tree topiary determined the colors. I want these to coordinate nicely. The paint colors I chose for the eggs match or coordinate with cotton fabric prints.

You can easily match or coordinate fabrics to items in your display or just choose colors for a particular holiday or season.

How To Create An Easter Rag Wreath — Choosing Fabrics For Your Rag Wreath

I went through my leftover fabrics and pulled these fabrics out to coordinate with the Robin’s egg blue I bought for some of the Easter eggs. A couple of the fabrics have a little pink dot or flower bud design. The larger pink flower blossom fabric echoes a little blue element. A pink bow will finish the wreath.

Fat Quarter Packages

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If you don’t feel confident in choosing coordinating fabrics, you can purchase a package of fat quarters. One of these measures 18″ x 22″. If you cut the fabric in half, you will have two pieces of fabric, 9″ x 22″. That makes 44 one-inch strips. In total, that would make 352 one-inch strips, which is not quite enough for the 14″ wreath. See my calculations below.

This fat quarter package caught my eye on Amazon. This would make such a pretty wreath!

There are tons of options with these fat quarter packages.

Cutting the Strips

Decide how long and how wide you want your strips. Consider the diameter of your wreath. Thinking that 8 inches would work, I cut a strip of fabric 8 inches long and 1 inch wide, I tied it around two of the wires on the wreath and decided a 9-inch strip would work better. The wires are about an inch apart. The extra inch will make up that difference.

You can create your strips by cutting with a rotary cutter and mat, cutting strips with scissors, or snipping the edge of the fabric and tearing.

The tearing gives a more straggly effect. Cut 9-inch squares or lengths and snip at 1-inch intervals, then, tear at each of the snips. That is easier than cutting! Of course, you can see I chose to cut the fabric strips with a rotary cutter!

Add Ribbon or Lace

For added color or textural interest, you can tie ribbons or ribbon lace intermittently along with the fabric strips. Coordinate the ribbons with the colors in your fabrics, match them, or contrast them. I chose not to add these elements. I want a softer and more understated look for this wreath.

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14-inch Metal Form for the Easter Rag Wreath

This rag wreath is made using a 14-inch metal form. You can use an 8-inch, 10-inch, 12-inch, 16-inch, 18-inch, or whatever size you want. These forms come in a variety of sizes including a large 30-inch form. You would want to cut your strips a little thinner for the 8-inch wreath and it takes less fabric for the smaller wreath. The 30-inch wreath would take quite a bit more fabric and you’d probably want to cut wider strips.

Frankly, I bought this frame from the dollar store! Talk about an inexpensive wreath by using leftover fabrics!

Decide How You Want To Add The Strips To The Wreath

You can place all of your strips in a pile, mix them up, and randomly pull them out to tie to the wreath. This creates a more random look with no pattern.

Create an interesting design by tying color blocks. Just tie one color or pattern using the sections of the frame as a guide.

I decided to tie groups of three of the same pattern, then, three of the next pattern, three of the next pattern, etc. Using 5 different fabrics, I cut the strips and stacked them in piles. It is easy to pick three from each pile, then, the next, and the next. Having the strips in order makes it easy to stay on track.

Three of the fabrics I chose had a pink element. I broke those up with the blue all-blue check fabric and the blue polka dot fabric between them.

A Fuller Easter Rag Wreath

Wanting a full wreath, I thought about doubling up the strips before tying them to the wreath form. That just makes sense, right? Well, with the fabrics I used, it just seemed too bulky to tie a nice knot. That idea is nixed.

Begin by wrapping one of the strips under the two center wires of the wreath. Bring the ends up and tie a double knot securely around the two wires.

Next, wrap a strip around the two inside wires and secure them with a double knot. Repeat on the two outer wires.

Choose another strip, wrap it under the two center wires, bring it up around the wires, and tie in a double knot. Repeat the pattern, wrapping the two inner wires, and then, the two outer wires.

After tying a few strips onto the wreath form, on the backside, squeeze the knotted strips together tightly to compact them. Compacting the strips will create a fuller wreath. This gives more space for most strips.

It took 68 strips for one section — It takes 68 strips for one section

To make it easy to count how many strips are needed, I stacked the strips in piles of 25. After finishing the first section, I counted the leftovers and discovered it took 68 strips to cover one section of the wreath. You can see it looks nice and full.

6 sections on the wreath means that it should take 408 strips in total to completely cover the wreath.

Cut The Remaining Strips

At this point, I know how many strips I need to finish the wreath. Know what the drawback of using scraps is? Some of the scraps are just shy of enough fabric, unfortunately.

You have an advantage! If I had known how many strips were needed in the beginning, an extra fabric could have been introduced before filling two sections! Yes, I didn’t realize this until I had filled two sections!

Fortunately, you know you will need about 408 strips to make the wreath! Cut all of your strips first if you are creating a definite pattern.

A new search through the fabric bins ensues to no avail. I love the look of this wreath but one of the fabrics is short of being enough for the entire wreath. A shopping trip is necessary. Dang!

My thought is to find a very similar fabric that I can weave in without too much of a visual jarring, something that will blend with the other fabrics. It is a good thought, but this is the closest thing to the same blue color at the local fabric stores! It’s not a check. Instead, it is a small circular print.

By keeping the fabric similar in the depth of color to the other fabrics, it blends in seamlessly.

Introducing Two New Fabrics

Ultimately, I chose two new fabrics. The blue fabric is similar in color to the blue check fabric. It blends in with the other blues in the wreath seamlessly. When I ran out of the blue checked fabric, I just eliminated it and continued using the other 5 fabric strips. It is not noticeable.

The pink print picks up the pink color in a couple of the other prints. It makes a nice contrast for a fabric bow for the wreath.

How Much Fabric Is Needed For This Easter Rag Wreath?

It would have been nice if I could have found how to figure out how much fabric is needed for this wreath. Counting how many I used was a bit tedious but now you can estimate how many you will need by using my calculations.

Buying half-yard, (18-inch), pieces of fabric would probably be the easiest way to cut these strips. You can just cut that width of fabric in half leaving two 9-inch lengths. Then, just cut those into 1-inch strips. Even though the fabric is supposed to be 45″, the actual useable fabric, without the selvage edge, is short of that. The fabrics usually have 44- inches of useable fabric. A half yard of fabric will conceivably make a total of 88 strips.

If you are using fabric scraps, it is not quite as easy with irregular edges. Cut those in advance to be sure you have enough. (Lesson learned here.)

If you use the fat squares and cut them into 1-inch strips, you will need a total of 10 fat squares. Each will make 44 one-inch strips.

Finishing The Wreath

With the extra contrasting fabric, I cut a 3-inch strip the width of the fabric. This creates a ‘ribbon’ of 3″ x 44″.

Tie a bow, decide how long you want the tails to be, and cut the ends at an angle.

Check out a shabby chic wreath look, ◄click here.

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