a wooden spool wreath!

This Christmas, I tried to do more gifts with meaning. I wanted to do something that I knew would be special to the person it was for. My sister has long admired Jane Goodall, and interned for her a few summers ago. For part of her gift, I bought her a chimp guardianship and she loved it, as I had suspected she would!

My mother has been quilting for about fifteen years, I'd say, and she was the one who inspired me to begin quilting and sewing. She's made some really gorgeous quilts over the years and is always there to answer the questions that I have with my quilting!

On the long drive back from Iowa over Thanksgiving, I saw a photo on pinterest that I knew I had to make for her- a wreath made of old wooden spools of thread! I fell in love with it immediately, and will admit that I had a hard time not showing the picture to her beforehand!

Wooden spools seem to have become a bit of a hot commodity among sewers, I think. I have a few that I'd found here and there, and I have them in a mason jar in my sewing room. I went onto etsy to find more, and they got expensive! In some cases that I found, they were five for $5! That seemed a bit much. I found a really sweet seller who had all sorts of fun spools at a great price and other things in her shop, so I ordered a few bags and had so much fun going through them. I should have taken more photos of a few of the individual spools, because there were some really cool ones in the bundles! I found a wire wreath frame at Michaels for about $3 and was ready!

I brought them home with me and made it at my parents house, rather than making it before the holiday (yes, I am a procrastinator...), but I figured it would be fun that way. Since we were in NH for a week, I brought my sewing machine and tons of fabric, and did a lot of sewing while I was home. I packed my pink glue gun for this project and had a crafty cocktail night with my mother and my oldest friend in the world, Hillary, which was just perfect.

Getting ready.....

(don't you just love the plastic daisy placemats?! I figured my mother didn't want hot glue all over her dining room table!)

Here's the finished wreath! I just love how it came out, and my mother does too. She looped a wide ribbon around it and hung it on the wall of her sewing room!

I really want to make one for my sewing room too!

Did you make any of your Christmas gifts this year?