garlands

I feel like I've been temperate in the garland category. Because there are so many that I see in happy crafty blogland that I have found so appealing. But I realized today that I had 3 garland set ups in my house and that was just two too many. Much as I love it, I reflected that April was too late for my awesome Valentine's Day garland, so I just left my dishes in the lurch (guess how often this happens?) and took it down, telling Audrey, who was spread out with her homework in the living room, that it and the sparkle snow (documented here), up in the window this year, just were past. She agreed, "Yeah, because snow is not what we're going for anymore." Indeed. I headed upstairs to the attic ("I'm finding the cards we wind them on") and she kindly took down the snowflakes.

Hm...It turns out that my usual method of winding garlands directly onto their cards is a very good thing.

I rescued a few multi-spangle strands while we watched Bolt (it was pretty awesome), but pretty much just peeled the rest apart and A put the pieces in a ziploc. I'll make it again next year.

The garland I left up is a new one I sewed for my studio window, and is my first non-seasonal one. I'm trying to plot which window should win its grace in the new house...

I cut a pile of leaf shapes from 4 shades of green wool felt, natural linen, and a loose-weave linen. The last is a stiff backing that lined some wool felt I found by the yard at our local fabric odds and ends store. It was intended for facing suit collars, but I peeled the two layers apart and like both of them for different purposes. The wool felt is fine and soft and, though I only found it in 3 colors, it was $5/yd (so I should have bought more...though, yes, there is plenty in my stash!). For most of the "vines" I pulled the felt and linen leaves at random from a bag while I sewed them all in a chain with green thread. I felt like the heavier linen leaves needed a vine with a bit more body, so I laid a medium-weight green crochet thread along the leaves and zig-zagged over it. The technique was experimental, but worked very neatly.


The window is one of the most viewable in our house; it faces the much-used side alley and isn't covered by a porch overhang like most on the ground floor. Previously, the windowsill was covered by a jumbly stack of empty jars (saved for pysanky dyes, incidentally, so now being used!), and just not so cute. I made the cranes (lovely papers that you cannot see) with Origami Club at the girls' school our first year here. They've been sitting in the window, but I strung them up to fly and put the raindrop crystal in a more prominent place. I bought the stained glass bird perching on the garland branch at the Corn Festival last year and Marian made the tissue paper raindrop (it's laminated & staying with me!) at school. This photo shows all the lovely sillhouettes; the blue and green colors are nice, too, in different light. I love them.

Twisting in the wind
I took the garlands outside, trying to get a better photo, but they blew in the wind. The photos were blurry, but I loved how the string lengths between set up the individual leaves to twirl. I'd love to hang these from a porch, but I'm afraid they would tangle with each other. Ideas to prevent this?