I have just pulled the last of my corn and thought it would be nice to have a corn husk wreath. What do you use for foundation for the wreath? Do you use dry, green or dry soaked husks? How to attach them to foundation? Any other ideas?

-- Debbie T in N.C. (rdtyner@mindspring.com), September 08, 2001

Answers

I made a wreath several years ago using indian corn. I got a metal ring from the craft store and wrapped the husks to the back with the cobs laying over the top and tied them in place with heavy brown string. A smaller ring was tied into place in the center of the first and strawberry corn (the tiny red ears) were tied to this one to cover it. Without looking at it, I'm not quite sure how I did this! The only problem I had was that the weight of the Indian corn wanted to pull the sides down when it was hung. I've had to tie them to each other in order to keep them upright. You should be able to do something similar by tying the husks around a ring and maybe adding something over the ties for decoration.

-- Cindy in NY (cjpopeck@worldnet.att.net), September 09, 2001.

Debbie, This is how to make one from a Rodale book of Nature Crafts. I'll try to explain it, but you might want to look for something at the library.

Start with a straw wreath base. Soak the husks to make them pliable, and cover the base with the husks flattened out. Glue them to the base. Once the base is covered you make little bundles of husks and pin them (with a floral pin) to the wreath in three rows: the outside edge, the inside edge, and the middle. To make the bundles you cut strips of cornhusk (the directions call for 960 strips if you're using a 12-inch base) 7 inches long and 1 inch wide and 160 strips 2 inches long and 1/4-inch wide. Each bundle is 6 strips folded in the middle (fold each one separately, and put them together so you see six folds) and tied in the middle of that with the quarter-inch piece. Trim the ends of the tie. With scissors, shred the lower part of each bundle (not the folded half) into strips about 1/8 inch wide. Insert a floral pin into each bundle near the tie and stick into the wreath close together to make the outside and inside rows (the folds should be towards the front of the wreath). For the middle row, the front face of the wreath, cut the bundles off below the ties (the unfolded half), and pin them close together to cover the face of the wreath. What you see them is a bunch of little folds covering the wreath. Add a bow and whatever else you want (little ears of corn, etc.), and there's your wreath. I hope the above makes sense. It's a lot of cutting but looks pretty nice.

-- Katherine (KyKatherine@Yahoo.com), September 09, 2001.