Corn Husk Crafts

Charles Siskin: Chattanooga's Southside Is Really Humming

Charles Siskin: Chattanooga's Southside Is Really Humming
by Charles Siskin
posted May 14, 2011

It was just after 7 a.m. on a chilly Saturday morning in April and I was sitting in the Bluegrass Café down on Main Street in Chattanooga sharing a bowl of cheese grits with Ken Hays. I’d come to Chattanooga to see first hand the amazing rebirth of the Southside of the city.

Mr. Hays is a well-known local developer and one of the driving forces (he thinks of himself as a “huge cheerleader”) behind the revival of the Southside - an area that just a few short years ago was home to abandoned houses, drug dealers, prostitution and high crime. In short, it had all the usual suspects of urban flight.

The transformation of this once-blighted area has been and continues to be the big buzz in Chattanooga. I had come back to the place of my birth where I raised my family before moving to the Emerald Coast of Florida more than a decade ago.

Chattanooga’s renaissance really began almost three decades ago when now deceased philanthropist Jack Lupton and his family foundation, the Lyndhurst Foundation, gave the city the seed money to begin a revitalization of the downtown area. A return to its roots at the banks of the Tennessee River with the focus on an aquarium was really how it all began.

It didn’t just return - it came roaring back with the sparkling new fresh-water Tennessee Aquarium and going non-stop with the opening of the Children’s Museum, an Imax Theater, a stunning addition to the Hunter Museum, dozens of new restaurants, hotels and housing, a nationally-recognized music festival, Riverbend, each summer and the opening of a second Aquarium section.

However, while everyone’s attention was focused on the redevelopment of the riverfront and the north shore just across the river - thanks to the restoration of the old Walnut Street Bridge as a pedestrian bridge - the Southside remained a seriously neglected stepchild.

The Southside hadn’t always been a blighted area. I can remember that after WWII Main Street was a key shopping area with numerous clothing, furniture and variety stores. It was also the location of my Uncle Jack’s Army/Navy store, a real first for the area.

How to Make a Corn Husk Wreath | Chickens in the Road

I love the rustic, old-fashioned charm of just about any craft involving corn husks, but wreaths are one of my favorites. Corn husks are easy and fun to work with–not to mention free if you save and dry your own. If you don’t have your own, this is the time of year to buy them by the bagful, cheap, at farmers markets to use in crafts (and tamales) all year long. (Retail craft stores are the worst places to buy corn husks–the price is marked up by the time they get to a store.) I made this wreath for free, of course, because I dry my own corn husks. (See how to dry corn husks here .)

To make a primitive corn husk wreath, all you need are corn husks, some twine and scissors, and a wire clothes hanger. Often when crafting with corn husks, you need to soak them to make them pliable to work with, but for this wreath, all you’re going to do is bundle them to the wire hanger, so there’s no need to do that. In fact, for this craft, you will actually make them more difficult to work with if they’ve been soaked.

If you want, you can use a store-bought metal wreath frame, but why spend money on something you’re going to cover up? Just go find a wire hanger in your closet and stretch it out into a circular shape for a “homemade” wreath frame. Look how handy that is–it comes with a hook to hang the wreath and everything! How I made this corn husk wreath uses a very basic wreath-making technique of attaching twine (or wire, if you prefer) to the wreath frame then laying down piece after piece, looping the twine around each piece as you go. Start by tying the twine to the base of the hook on the hanger, which will give your corn husk pieces something to bump up against as you begin going around the circle. Place the first piece down at a 45-degree angle. Loop the twine around the husk and the wire, tighten, then move on to the next one. tying or knotting the husk onto the frame, just looping the twine around it to fasten.

As you go, each piece is held in place by the piece before it and after it on the continuing loops of twine.

You’re working on the backside of the wreath as you go around the circle of the frame. Here, the next piece goes down on top of the twine, which is coming out from under You can use this same technique (and a wire hanger) to create wreaths using evergreen boughs, twigs, etc. Wire works better for evergreen boughs and twigs, but I like twine for corn husks as the colors blend together, making the twine disappear, and husks don’t require the strength of wire to hold them in place. Twine does the job just fine.