Hexy-Holly Wreath

With the school Christmas fair, a trip on the Santa express steam train, present-buying and pudding making it's definitely Christmas time in our house now. Sitting down at the end of the day with some sewing has been a nice escape from the lists, timetables and deadlines for a little while.
The last few evenings have been spent finishing my experimental hexy-holly wreath that I posted about previously. Once all of the leaves were hand-sewn in place, using some red fabric scraps and iron-on adhesive (fusible web), I added some little circular red berries in between each pair of leaves.

I stabilised the wreath by putting some neutral lining fabric behind it before machine-stitching a grey outline in one continuous go around the edges and down the centre of each leaf and around each berry. Afterwards I trimmed away the stabilising fabric on the back close to the stitching so that it didn't restrict the top fabric when stretched over an embroidery hoop to finish it.

The last job then was to fit it into an 8 inch hoop to display it. When the wreath was centrally fitted with the fabric securely fitted in the hoop, I cut away the excess fabric from around the edge leaving approximately 1/2 inch of fabric over. This leftover fabric around the edge was then brushed with pva craft glue, folded over and stuck to the inside of the hoop. Easy.

I really enjoy testing out ideas and experimenting as I go, usually even if something doesn't work out it still often triggers an idea for an alternative method or design during the process. On the whole I think this worked out fairly well. Maybe next time I'll try stitching the outline in black and doubling it up to make it stand out more and possibly look at adding groups of three smaller berries instead of just one.