Tim often looks at me with this incredulous look on his face and asks, “How DOES your mind work?” I like to think he asks when he’s awed by my creative energy… chances are he asks when he’s considering having me committed! Anyway… when “creating”, there are 2 different approaches I take. First, there is deliberate creating. There will be something I want to make… say, beds for the gnome house. So, I think about it and come up with a plan. Sometimes, if uninspired, I might wander the aisles of my local craft shop, or surf the web, then “bam”, an idea surfaces, and I’m off and running.

The other way I create is, at best, merry happenstance. I’ll just be fiddling with something, and all of a sudden, my random bending, folding, and mutilating produces an end product that actually looks like something, and the project is born. My hay bundles were the result of mindless shredding of burlap.

I had a big roll of garden burlap to wrap a few plants with for the winter. I had cut off too much, and had a long strip left over. I am a shredder, what can I say? My mom was always fearful that we had a mouse in the house, when she would discover one of my little piles. Might be a Kleenex, might be a page out of a magazine, might be unraveled yarn. I’m a pro at shredding! Well, much to my delight, burlap unravels very easily, and before I knew it, I had unraveled threads from both long sides of the strip, leaving a narrow band of fabric in the center. Then, for no apparent reason, I rolled the strip, and tah dah, it looked like corn stalks or hay bundles. I tied it off, and put it in the gnome autumn forest and it looked great.

So there you have it. I’m including the exact directions below. Trust me, these are so easy, you’ll find you are tucking them all over the house!

Materials:  
6″ x 36″ strip of burlap, cut on the straight of the grain… very important! (To see how to cut along the straight of the grain, check out the tute found HERE. Each strip makes 1 hay bundle.

Cut out a strip of burlap 6″ X 36″ Most garden burlap, used for wrapping outdoor plants comes 36″ wide. Cut off the 2 end selvages. (The tightly woven ends on the 6″ sides.)

Unravel 2″ off each long side, leaving 2″ intact down the middle of the strip.

Using a pencil or other thin smooth rod, begin at one short end, and tightly roll the entire strip around your pencil, keeping the ends even. NOTE: When the burlap comes off the roll, it will curl. When wrapping, you want to make sure the curl is down, so when you are done, the curl causes the burlap to bend outward.



Using 1 of the threads that you unraveled from the burlap, overlap and end of the thread, and tightly wrap the 2″ center woven section.

Using a large needle, tie off the end by weaving the end all the way through the center section 2 times. Cut off the remainder of the thread near the bundle.


Your hay bundle is now ready to add autumn flair to your gnome or doll house.

NOTE: The pattern for the mini pumpkins can be found HERE, and the Old World Gnomes can be found HERE.