Christmas Fun with Burlap

Burlap is a staple in the garden.  It can be used to shade seedlings, to line wire baskets, to keep seeds moist during germination, to bind the root ball of a plant during relocation, and for erosion control. That's just a few ideas that come to mind.  If you can think of more, please leave me a comment with your favorite uses for burlap.  I'd love to hear from you.

I've used burlap in the garden for years, but I never thought of using it to decorate until now.  I was quite surprised to discover that burlap makes a wonderful material for all sorts of Christmas crafts and decorations.  Using actual garden center burlap will work, but if the smell bothers you, look for lower odor versions of burlap cloth and ribbon at your local craft or fabric store.  

Burlap can be elevated from it's utilitarian purposes and become a thing of beauty.  I was inspired to decorate with burlap this year when I purchased this lovely burlap table runner made by a local artist at Little Flower Linen.  The lace finished ends are a great idea and I plan to use it all year round.

To decorate with burlap, you just need to get a little crafty.  The web is full of wonderful ideas, so after checking out many of the ideas on Pinterest, I decided to try my hand at some burlap crafts of my own.

I found some instructions for burlap garland, and once I figured out how to make it, I had a blast trying to figure out different things to do with it.  One of the things I made was a burlap wreath.  I was totally amazed at how easy this was to construct.  I used wide burlap ribbon, jute twine, a metal wreath form, some scissors and a large sewing needle. 

Using a simple in and out straight stitch, I sewed right down the middle of the burlap ribbon.

I used the stitching to pull and gather the fabric into a ruffle.  I secured the ruffled fabric to the wire wreath frame by hand sewing it with more jute twine.  If you don't sew, here's another no sew wreath project I found on the web that uses the same burlap ribbon.

I added a few gold balls, butterflies and satin ribbon to the finished product.
  

The butterflies are my favorites.  Those little guys are clip-ons I bought at Michaels.  How cool is that?

The wreath became the focal point of my kitchen window.

I even added little bells and pine cones to finish the ends of the window garland.

And then, I went a little burlap crazy... 

I used plain burlap strips tied with jute and decorated with ball garland on the doors, 

and more burlap garlands to add a festive touch to the windows.

It took a lot of burlap garland to decorate the tree, but it's the perfect country touch to accent my little chickens and other birds.

Here's one final project using some Burford Holly trimmed from a shrub in my front yard.  I combined the greenery with some faux berries and some small burlap ribbon tied in a bow.  This little project took about 15 minutes including the shrub pruning.

I hope I've inspired you to include a little burlap in your Christmas decorating this year.  

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!