College Colors Argyle Yarn Wreath

When I saw this wreath on Pinterest, I just LOVED it! An argyle wreath? Adorable!

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Then I saw this one:

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A school-spirited argyle wreath? Even MORE adorable!

When it came time to come up with a Christmas gift idea for my cousin and her husband (big Baylor University fans), I immediately thought of these cute wreaths and set out to make one myself! Here's the Baylor University wreath that I ended up with:

I was really happy with how it turned out, and I think they liked it to! Here's the how-to:

First, I started with an 18-inch straw wreath form (I just left the plastic wrapping on to keep the straw pieces from escaping!). I hot glued the end of a skein of white yarn to the wreath form, and started wrapping it around and around (over and over and over again).

The yarn-wrapping is BY FAR the worst part of this project. I really underestimated how long it would take to finish. I wrapped the entire wreath three times (because the coverage wasn't even enough for my liking after the first two times around), and it took me all of one skein and part of a second skein of white yarn. 

It's really not so bad if you sit in front of the TV and do it... it took me two movies and three episodes of Big Bang Theory to finish (but I was being pretty perfectionistic about the yarn placement). 

Once the wreath was completely covered in white yarn, I hot glued the end of the yarn to the back of the wreath. Then, I started cutting out my felt diamonds. I made a template out of paper, and cut a bunch of them with my rotary cutter and self-healing mat. I think I used about 4 sheets each of green and gold for the entire project (including the flowers and BU letters you see when you scroll down). 

I positioned all of the diamonds on the wreath to make sure they were evenly spaced (and I didn't end of with two of the same color next to each other), and then I just hot glued each diamond down. 

After all the diamonds were glued down, I started the argyle criss-cross stripes with black yarn. To do this, you have to go completely around in one direction, then completely around in the other direction. For each direction, I hot glued the ends of the black yard at the start and finish (on the back of the wreath). Here it is after one direction was finished:

I cut the Baylor University logo out of felt by printing it out and tracing it, then cutting with a craft knife. 

I made two types of felt flowers to adorn the wreath. The first kind (like the yellow flower below) were made by cutting spirals of felt, then just rolling them up from the inside like a spool of ribbon (and covering the back in hot glue to hold it together).

The second kind of flowers (the ruffly ones) were made by cutting out lots of little circles and gluing them together (a la this tutorial).

Here's the finished product!

I pinned a ribbon loop onto the back of the wreath using pearl-headed straight pins so it could be hung easily on a wreath hook.

I had a couple extra flowers, so I glued them onto a barrette clip for my cousin's daughter:

Teehee... so cute!

I kind of want to make a Texas A&M version for myself, but the thought of doing all that yarn-wrapping again isn't really very appealing... haha! Still, I loved how it turned out, so I might have to make another one one day!

PS - I have to show you another wreath I did for Christmas as well (this one's a TCU wreath!)... I'm not going to do a tutorial (because it was just hot glue and sticking stuff onto a wreath), but I love how it turned out so I just have to share! This one was for my sister, a student at Texas Christian University.

Hehe! I love it!

Did anyone else make some wreaths this Christmas? I think they're so fun!