Autumn yarn wreath with felt roses

2010 seems to be the Year of the Wreath for me. Even though I'll be pulling out the Christmas tree on Friday, I was determined to get this autumn wreath finished so that I could display it for a few days at least.

I first saw this lovely wreath on the blog take heart back before Halloween. I've seen yarn wreaths all over blogland and I was struck by the gold, deep red and ivory color combination of Danielle's wreath. Yellow is not a color I'm normally drawn to but I just loved the warmth of the gold and the contrast with the beautiful russet color, so I decided to throw originality out the window and just copy Danielle completely! I purchased all of the supplies at JoAnn's while I was buying last-minute Halloween costume stuff, but there was one problem: when I got home, the golden yarn I had chosen looked too bright and along with the red, all I could think of was ketchup and mustard!

I meant to exchange the yarn, but my preparations and subsequent trip to London got in the way. I thought maybe I'd just give up and use the wreath form for another project, but last week on a trip to the thrift to check out the Christmas offerings, I found the perfect color of yarn so I decided to go ahead with the project anyway!

I've made a lot of wreaths so far this year, but this one was definitely the quickest and easiest. I followed Danielle's excellent tutorial so I won't retype it here. If I did this project again, I'm not sure I'd use a straw wreath form. I left the plastic wrapper on but it the wreath form itself was so lumpy! In some places the lumps were so bad I had to slit the plastic and remove the piece of straw underneath to get rid of the bumps. I've been using those extruded foam wreath forms all year and they're nice and smooth, so I would have preferred that look but I just wanted to get this one done so I used the straw.

I made my felt roses just like Danielle's and they were also really quick and easy to make. If you're curious about sizing, I used a circle almost the size of a whole sheet of felt to make the largest flowers. I had some green felt in my stash so I added a few leaves as well. I wrapped a piece of crocheted lace around the top to make a hanger and simply slipped the holes in the flowers over my hook to hang it!

This pattern would lend itself to a really beautiful Christmas wreath! What colors would you use?