Leaf Garland Tutorial

I love to decorate, but I hate to spend a lot of money. I also try to stay away from fall decorations that are just specific to either Halloween or Thanksgiving. Since I have to store the decorations I want to be able to use them for the greater parts of Sept/Oct/Nov. So I decided to make an inexpensive garland for autumn.

Items needed:
flannel in desired colors
scissors
contrasting colored thread
a outline/pattern of a leaf in desired size
twine
a sharpened pencil or large needle

I found a coloring pages online of leaves that I liked, copied and paste it into a Word Document so I could change the size of the leaves to what I wanted, then printed them off and cut one out.

I then cut some flannel to the size of the leaf and pinned it to the flannel. I only doubled up on the flannel because it was too hard to cut through three layers at once.

I then sewed the vein lines onto the leaf with contrasting colored thread. First I did the center vein. Then started at the outside part of the leaf, sewed into the center, pivoted the needle and sewed to the opposite part of the leaf.

Because I didn't have a large needle that I could tread the twine through, I used a sharpened pencil to poke a small hole at the top of the leaf.

Then I folded over my twine so it was stiff enough to stick through the hole. I threaded the twine through each pencil poked leaf in a random order.

Then I hung up the garland and spaced out the leaves how I wanted them.

Since I had everything but the flannel, this project cost me $0.50 which was spent on the flannel. Now go spend +/- a dollar and make your own!