Lucky Wreath

This week I took on the challenge of updating our "holiday wreath".  My self-imposed goal was to do it with supplies I had on hand.  An unintended goal came from the fact that I started this project at 2:20pm on a day when I start teaching at 3:30pm. 

I wanted something different than just things hanging around the wreath's edge.  Of course, there needed to be a four-leaf clover.  A couple days prior I had decided I would add something hanging into the middle.

I went to work in my Photoshop Elements.  I created a four-leaf clover pattern that I sized onto a 17x11 sized project.  In essence, I made something the size of two regular sized papers side-by-side.

I then went and made two separate documents.  I outlined a rectangle that was 8 1/2 x 11 sized and moved it to the left of the above pattern.  I copied the pattern, and pasted it onto a new sheet, sized the same as a regular sheet of paper.

I did the same for the right side.

I cut these out.  I left a little extra bit of white paper next to the right side to have something to lay the left side on top of.  The black circle was placed in the middle to make sure I had all my edges lined up based off the circle.  I'm not sure it was totally necessary, but I got the idea off my purse pattern and it was a nice extra line to make sure things worked out.

I found a piece of green fabric from my stash that was big enough to fold in half to give me two sides to sew together.  I traced my pattern, then drew a little dashed line inside 1/4 inch for my seam allowance.  I think I would sew a little less seam allowance next time.

I actually had stuffing and I stuffed my four leaf clover. 

I didn't want all green or my door was going to look like Christmas so I added some brown ribbon I had.

I was running out of time at this point; I needed to eat my snack of cheese and crackers before teaching or my students were going to have percussion playing along with them when my stomach growled.

I stitched the clover closed and looped the ribbon around the wreath and tacked it to the back with small stitches.

For the third holiday in a row, the brown "M" makes an appearance, though it's location was changed. 

Without further adieu:

I swear that fabric has green in it.  I didn't have anything darker that was also big enough for this clover.  But next time I'd definitely go for something a little more green and solid-colored.

But this will do for now.  And it was free.

I made a point to tell Mike I changed out the wreath.  Why?  Because my mom stopped by one day after I had added the hearts for Valentine's decorations.  I was gone and my mom commented to Mike how pretty the wreath looked.  He thought she'd lost a few marbles that day and couldn't figure out why she was making such a big deal out of a wreath that had been up for two months.  A week later he read the blog and discovered we'd left Christmas behind and had changed decorations for February.

We are nothing if not great communicators.