4th of July Felt Garlands

After spotting the garlands on the Land of Nod's website recently, I decided to try making my own 4th of July version. By making it myself, I not only save some cash, but I can also customize it. I was thinking it would be great to just alternate red white and blue.

I started out by cutting my sheets of felt out. For the circles I traced two different sizes of pillar candles. For the triangles, I just did it free hand.

The circles were VERY time consuming to cut out. And they aren't very "perfect" either. I figured they would be fine because the wouldn't be right in people's faces to examine how perfect or imperfect they are. This would probably be a better option if you had some sort of circle punch that worked with felt/fabric.

I also decided to do triangles as well. They were WAY easier to cut out. Again, they aren't perfect, but I didn't want them to be either.

Sewing was fairly simple. I pondered thread color for awhile, but finally decided to go with white. Mostly because it is the most neutral and maybe I had a bobbin of white already in the machine....

The circles worked out the easiest because I could just slide the next circle right under the foot when the other on was sewn all of the way across.

It took a second for the next circle to catch, so it gave them that little spacing in between. The circles took maybe 5-10 minutes to sew together. I used one sheet ($.29/each) each of red, white, and blue and ended up just over 9ft long. Not a bad deal.

Triangles were a bit more difficult to sew together because the machine didn't want to "grab" the next triangle. I spent a lot of time lifting the foot and putting the next one under. I broke a lot of thread trying to make it work without doing that...

For the triangles I used two sheets of each color, because they were WAY easier to cut up. And this one is really, really long. At least double the circle one, so probably close to 20 ft long.

I think I will be using one outside and one inside on the 4th of July, but I'm not quite sure how yet. You can definitely expect displayed photos then.

Project cost:
6 sheets of 9" x 12" at $.29 each = $1.74

Alternatively, the solid colored garlands over at Land of Nod cost $10.95 each at about 8 ft long.

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UPDATE:
Here are a couple shots of the garlands in action on the 4th of July!