Making Grapevine Wreaths

This area has a boom year for wild grapes going on, the sheer amount of fresh growth is amazing, in 3 months what looks like 2 years worth of growth. I had to hack some out before they ate the yard, and rolled the cut vines up to make wreaths.

I started with random piles of cut vines. When I cut I pull down the vines to keep as much length as I can intact. Longer vines are easier to work with. I'm considering anything under 6 or 8 feet to be a short vine, I use them too, but with a different technique.

one of the piles of vines

I go through a pile, untangle it enough to find a good long vine. I look at how the vine has grown, where it kinks or branches, and visualize how I can make them an asset to the wreath design BEFORE I start rolling it. I think plain circles of vines are boring, by looking at the growth you can see what else can be done with them. Personally, I like teardrop shaped wreaths with things that stick out so decorations have places to be. I like long stems at the top, or tails at the bottom. So a random vine might have a good kink about 5 foot from the thick base, I'd probably start the thick base at the top sticking up, and roll the first loop so the kink meets that to make it the top of a teardrop, then roll from there.

Depending on how you like them and what you are working with, you can pass the vine through the middle repeatedly, to hold it all tight, or roll it up and use just one pass of a vine to go through once or twice around the whole thing to hold it together. Greener vines will dry neat if they are passed through a lot, drier vines are stiffer so it's easier to only do it a little bit to hold it together.

Long vines look neat if you can sort of twisty braid them a bit before you roll them, adds texture to the wreath.
Short vines can be made into good wreaths by twisty braiding them too, kind of like french braiding hair, although I don't like the look of classic three strand braided wreaths, I've seen them, never appeal to me. What I do is take a bunch of short vines, lay them out in a line with several strands in each section, make them overlap well, then twisty braid the whole line together. Then roll the braid like it's one vine (that has to be handled gently so it stays together while being messed with!)

Laying out shorter vines into a line

The same line, twisty braided together

That same line rolled up into this wreath

Because I was dealing with very fresh cut vines, I left the leaves on. The branches need to dry anyway, and I'm hanging them outside to dry, so the leaves will break out as it all dries. If I have to, I'll hit it with a leafblower to remove any stubborn bits in a couple of months.

As each wreath was finished, I put a pipe cleaner on it at the top to hold it a bit more together as it dries and to give me a wire to hang it up to dry with, I'll put an inconspicuous wire on them later to hang them up, but a colored one right now makes it easier to find the wire to move them around. I tried to get a picture of all 11 wreaths hanging in the arbor, but green vines on green backgrounds didn't photo well.

Two freshly rolled wreaths hanging to the arbor to dry

After a few days the leaves are already dropping off, this pic was taken Wednesday, the vines were cut and rolled on Sunday. (The sunflower is not involved, it marks a strawberry plant that has jumped the fence, so it can be found to pick berries.)

Three days after being hung to dry

So what will they look like when dry? I'll take pictures as they dry up, but a couple I made a few years ago show how they may look. The first one is circular, with a long trailing tail. It lives on the front door of this rental, and because I have oodles of fake flowers from the trash pile of the graveyard behind the house, I change the flowers out when I think about it. I put on this one a series of wires in a pattern that looks good on this wreath, made the wires longer than you'd expect, twisted them into the positions I wanted them, then I use the long tails of the wire to twist the flowers in. Makes it very easy to swap out flowers keeping them symmetrical and the pattern balanced.

Front door wreath with fake flowers

This one is in the house, I made it to fill a big space above a gas fireplace. It's about 4.5 feet tall, and a teardrop, with places to put things. This pic was taken after the winter decor was taken off, but before the summer decor has gone on. It has bird nests, fake birds, butterflies, etc that will go on it. This is more what I'm hoping some of the wreaths I just made will look like, This has a LOT more personality than the circle on the door, which has a LOT more personality than the ones you see in stores. (The angels come out of the graveyard trash pile too, white plastic, molded with plastic stakes that hold fake flowers. I cut them off the stakes they are on, and paint them, Mom likes angels!)

Big teardrop wreath made to fit an exact space

This is what I did last Sunday, when I had to do pruning, but didn't really want to work!!
:D

I often get distracted by making wreaths when pruning vines, if I find some nice long ones. I typically do the passing the ends through the center method, aiming for round... in different sizes depending on how pliable the vines are, or quantity, or whatever... If the vines are thin, it can be a bit tedious to begin with the passing through method, so winding a bunch around a form such as a 5 gallon pail or a garbage can makes a substantial core before adding vines that are passed through the center to bind it all together. Another way to bulk it up more quickly is to alternate the direction of the passing, a few time around the wreath passing towards your body, and then switch to passing away from the body, then later back to towards the body... the criss-cross pattern has a "braided" look compared to the simpler "twisted/ropy" look.

I have two vines, both cultivated. I only prune them in autumn, except for breaking off bits that are growing the wrong way, and I nibble on those, or if they're bigger I cook with the leaves.
I make a pile, and then go through them and wind up the approximately 10 foot or longer, unbranched ones and set them aside for "some time".
The size depends on the stiffness of the cane, I make them as small as I can. I like a lot of overlap. Sometimes I use more than one cane for one round.
I think the ones with lots of curly bits are really pretty, and I use them for holiday wreaths. I do like them round, as there is lots of visual interest in the tendrils and the canes themselves. They kind of represent the wheel of the year for me.
I keep saying I'm going to take two of them that fit together well  and are pretty smooth and simple to use as the frame for an appalachian style basket. But no, I'm doing very little basketry these days.
Maybe I'll eventually find a use for them as part of a plant support or something.