Easy Garland for any Occasion

So in the theme of weddings still, I am going to share how I made my own handmade garland.

To save money, I recycled all my extra save the date cards, invitations, RSVP, and envelopes.

I had on hand some hole punches, a 1 1/2 inch circle and a little heart punch.  I bought them a while ago from Amazon and Etsy.

Supplies needed:

Sewing Machine and thread

A recycled dull needle – (Always save your old changed out needles, a new needle will go dull from sewing paper.)

Hole punches (any design – go crazy! just make sure they are not too small)

A piece of poster board cut down to 8.5 x 11 (I used a comic board)

 

Making your Garland

To get started,  start punching out circles and hearts.

Keep going until you punched out as many possible from the same card, until there is no space left to punch out anything else.

Once you have a nice big pile of cut out designs, get your sewing machine ready.

Before I started sewing together my garland I decided on my pattern. The first one I made, I chose to do a whole bobbin worth of hearts.

Just start feeding your hearts under the foot of the sewing machine, the machine will start pulling it under the needle.

Keep your sewing machine speed low to medium. Speed up only once you have  a feel for how quickly to put another heart under  the foot.

Continue to feed hearts into the machine until the bobbin is empty.

Mine took about 1/2 hour at medium speed.

Once, the bobbin is empty,  carefully tape the last heart to the comic board or poster board.

Then slowly wined the garland around the board to keep it from getting tangled.

Once you are at the end of the garland, use washi tape or masking tape to attach it to the board for easy spotting.

With the circles I used some old book pages cut out and added to the circles at the same time. Came out just as beautiful!

 

Using the heart garland, I laid it out on my tables with the burlap and painted bottles.  It lent to a beautiful and romantic table setting. I went from one end of the table to the other without cutting off the hearts. This made the 3 tables set up side by side look and feel like one long banquet table.

 

This decoration only took my time. I made 3 full bobbins of hearts and 4 bobbins worth of different patterns.  This allowed us to play around with the garland and really set up a theme of romance. We actually didn’t put any decorations on the walls in the hall, except behind the bridal party we hung the circle garland in vertical strips all the way down the stage to cover a faux stone wall.

Other Applications for Handmade Garland

This same tutorial can be applied for graduations, birthdays, baby showers, and much more.

This is an engagement prop my photographer friend asked me to make after she saw the garland for my wedding.

I used my Silhouette machine to cut out the letters and numbers then using the same method as above put it through my sewing machine.

 

This is a fun and super easy project, it is easy enough for someone who has never sewn! Have fun with it!

XOXO till next time!

Stay inspired and create!

Jesy