Independence Day Garland

Long, long ago... in another life... I was the holiday decoration QUEEN!  I loved holidays!  I once asked for (and did not receive) a tall, thin faux evergreen tree to adorn throughout the year with seasonal trinkets.  Well, then the challenges of my own journey got in the way and the decorating slowed to a snail's pace around here.  But NO MORE!

 Pretty Pinwheels on our Porch Posts

I got inspired while savoring each page of the latest Victoria magazine. (Amazing magazine.  Each issue is a vacation in loveliness and bliss.  Subscribe today.)  I'd been wanting to try my hand at making some of the cute garlands I've seen on all the creative girls' blogs, but this one really caught my eye...

 Victoria Magazine, July/August 2010, page 25

The instructions were pretty easy:  start with fabric.  We have lots of outdated fabric sample books obtained for FREE from a local fabric store, so we went through them and pulled out fabrics with reds, blues, creams, whites, tans, and golds...

Cut the fabric into workable pieces and apply fabric stiffener.  The instructions suggest 12"x12", cutting it down to 6"x12" when the stiffener is dry.  My daughter and I decided we'd skip the middle man and cut them to size first, then apply stiffener.  The trick is to have the longer sides of the rectangle at least double the length of the shorter sides.  Since we didn't have fabric stiffener (and we're really inventive girls) we took the half jar of Mod Podge we had on hand and filled it up with water, diluting the glue inside.  We applied the 'stiffener' to the back sides of the fabric rectangles...

Once the fabric rectangles were dry, we folded them accordian-style, as instructed...

Now the instructions are to fan out each side to create a circle, then secure the edges and center with white craft glue, clothespinning in place until dry.  We didn't have nearly enough clothespins to hold the number of pinwheels we wanted to make (and we're really impatient girls), so we used hot glue instead...

Continue making pinwheels, varying the patterns and sizes as desired.  Then punch two small holes in each pinwheel and string onto twine to create a garland.  We had quite a time punching the holes!  We used a 1/8" hole punch so the holes would not be noticeable, but some of our fabrics were thicker and more textured than others.  We muddled through and strung our pinwheels.  As I am NOT tall at all, my dear husband helped me hang and drape the garland on our porch posts this afternoon.  So far, we've had one neighbor come to the door to ask if we'd done it ourselves and how, and one neighbor called to ask if she'd missed a party!!!

 What fun!  We have a few extra pinwheels left... I'm thinking of hanging them in the tree that overhangs our outdoor dining table.  What special touches are you adding to your own 'farm'?