Making a Halloween Moth Wreath

For the Spooky Season I decided to get creative and make the moth wreath of my dreams.

I made this wreath using things from my craft cupboard (and a little bit of packaging from a recent Ikea order).

You will need:
Cardboard
Scissors
White wool roving
needle felting roving in black and white
Needle felting needle
Foam block to felt on
felt sheet in black - I only needed one sheet for 5 moths
Sewing thread in black and white (to match your roving)
Pen/pencil
Paper
Pins to help place parts on your wreath (optional but helpful)

First you prep the wreath base by cutting out some card board rings. the more height you give the cardboard the rounder and thicker your wreath base will be. Wrap the wool roving around making sure that it’s not too even, twists and lumpy sections are perfect for a textured look. Whe you're finished wrapping just tuck the ends under to secure them.

Use some of the black wool roving to felt little cones for the moth bodies. Then create some little heads by felting in a ring at the wider end to create a sort of neck. Pulling a tiny piece of roving and twist it between your fingers to create some antennae for your moth. Attach to your moth head by gently felting the middle to the head being careful to not create a noticable dent in the head.

Trace one of your moth bodies and make a little sketch of what you want your wings to look like. I decided to make a few types and sizes of moth so I ended up with three wing patterns. You will use this as the pattern on your felt sheets. Cut out the wings from you felt sheet using this pattern - some tailor's chalk could be useful here but I couldn't find mine so I just held the pattern in place as I cut around it.

Work out where your wings will attach on your moth body but don't stich them on yet. Take a little bit of the white and twist it into a disk to start making the skull between the wings. Add to TINY tufts for eye sockets and finesse as needed. All of the needle felting I did was very free hand and you kind of just keep adding or taking away as you need- play around with it until you're happy.

Stitch on your wings with a simple whip stitch. If your thread matches pretty well you shouldn't need to worry about it being pretty as I found it didn't show up very much against the dark roving.

Once you have enough moths (I made 5 total), place them on your wreath roughly where you want them. take some of the white roving you wrapped the wreath base with and pin it at one end. gently spread it apart creating a spider web like appearance. Pull across your wreath as desired. To make it more three dimensional, I recommend pulling some sections around the front of the wreath and some up from the back. Once you're happy with it tuck the ends in to the original wreath wrappings to secure.

Double check the placement of your moths and run a few stitches through each moth and the wreath to tack them down (you may also need to tack down a wing or two depending on how you want your wreath to hang). I also adjusted and tacked down areas of the spread "web".

Hang it off your door or wall and revel in the spooky fun!