Fall fun!

The other day we were at the park and we found an abundance of horse chestnuts or conkers.  We had a great time hunting for them in the grass and peeling open the spiky pods to find the beautiful nuts inside. 

These chestnuts are not good for eating but they sure look beautiful.  We collected a whole bag full so now we just need to figure out what to do with them all. 

My first project was to make a garland with some of them, so here we go!


First poke some holes through a few of the chestnuts using a strong pin or large needle.  I used a hat pin.

The nuts are pretty soft so it only requires a small amount of force to get through the nut.  Run the pin back through the hole from the opposite direction.

Then I went through my scrap fabrics and found some lovely fall colors:

 Then I cut out lots and lots of different sizes of leaves.   I picked fabrics that do not fray easily, but if you do have fraying fabrics you may want to fray check the edges or just embrace the texture of the edges.

Next I cut a ridiculously long bit of thread, threaded a needle (after checking to make sure that it would make it all the way through each of the chestnuts with enough room to pull it through the other side) and knotted the end so that I had a doubled thread the whole length. 

I threaded on groups of leaves and secured them in place with a single stitch, leaving a few inches of space in between:

I tied small knots on either side of the chestnuts to help keep them from sliding around too much:

Once one of the knots gets inside the chestnut it will hold fairly well. 

I kept on this way for the whole length of the tread and voila!  A cute little fall garland :)

I also added a jar full of the nuts to the top of the mantle and this little owl card seemed to fit in so well:

Happy fall friends!