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Long time no see? speak? read? Either way, it’s been a while. My husband and I recently moved into a new apartment, and with that came a purge of old things and the making of space for new things. I knew I wanted some new wall decor, and I’d been seeing these yarn wall hangings popping up all over Pinterest and Instagram. Like most things, I looked into buying one and the cost, of course, was ridiculous. Some of them were going for $300! Now, don’t get me wrong, a lot of them were handmade, and I believe in paying people for their work. But, I don’t have $300 to spare for a wall hanging. Maybe one day, but not today. So, in true me fashion, I decided to make my own yarn wall hanging.
I try my best not to be a selfish person in most regards, still working on it in some places. However, I will not be selfish and I will share with you how I got this knock-off, customizable, DIY yarn wall hanging. I made it in just over an hour, and I spent $3. Yes, $3, not $300. Now, I already had a dowel lying around my house(don’t ask me where it came from), which saved me a couple of bucks. Realistically, though, starting from scratch, you can make this for around $10 or $15, still considerably less than $300.
So, let’s get started, shall we?
What You’ll Need
- Wooden Dowel
- Scissors
- Yarn
Optional
- Scrap piece of Cardboard
- Wooden Beads
- paint
- wood stain
For your wooden dowel, the thickness should cater to your desired look. You can also paint or stain it if you want. Dowels are usually around $1 or $2 at Michael’s. Such as this one here.
For the yarn, if you’re going for the neutral or muted colors, I would suggest an off white or natural tan, or pale yellow. Accent colors to match decor can be added if you’d like. You can also do a grayscale or full-on bright color scheme, it’s completely up to you. I bought one bundle for less than $3 at Walmart and didn’t even use the entire bundle!
If you need to buy paint or stain that should still leave you under $10 as you don’t need a full size of either for a single dowel.
How-To
Okay, so the first thing you want to do after gathering your supplies is find an open surface to work on. This can be the floor, a table, whatever.
Next, lay your dowel out in front of you, and take out your yarn.
Step 1:
Pull out a long piece of yarn, and use this to figure out how long you would like your longest part. Do this by placing the tip of the yarn at the dowel and unraveling until it looks the length you want. Don’t cut it yet.
Step 2:
Double the length of the piece of yarn that you pulled. When measuring to see how long you would like your longest piece to be, take into consideration that braiding, knotting and adding beads will take away from the length. Add about an inch or so, depending on your dowel’s thickness, and another inch if you plan to knot or braid a little.
Step 3:
Cut the yarn at the doubled length and fold it in half.
Step 4:
With your dowel on a flat surface, place loop at the back of the dowel.
Reaching through the loop and over the dowel, grab the two strings in the front and pull them through tightly
Check to see if you like the length. Try placing a knot in it to see how it changes the length. This is the time to play around with it before you cut the rest of your pieces.
If you aren’t satisfied with the length, cut another piece and do the same thing until you are. Once you’re satisfied, remove the string from the dowel.
Step 5:
BEFORE you cut all of them, take this into consideration. The ends of your yarn can be uniform in length, neatly tailored to a certain shape, or more “organic” with varying lengths
If you want a more organic option, you have two choices.
Option 1: You cut it all to the same length, and when you’re done adding the details, go back and cut the pieces to look like they are at varying lengths
Option 2: What I did, I cut 1/3 of my yarn to my longest length, but I intentionally wasn’t super precise when measuring, I just got within a cm or two up or down) each time. Then, I cut a piece at a shorter length and did 2/3 of my yarn the same way with the shorter piece
Now, cut more pieces to that same length(if you’re using that option), using the first as a guide. You can do this by simply using the first and matching the length, or you can find a piece of cardboard that is the length of your yarn.
Place the yarn into a notch in the cardboard and begin to wrap it around. This will ensure all of your pieces are the same length without you having to hold them individually. Once you feel you’ve wrapped enough, cut them at one end, releasing the pieces.
How many you cut will depend on how wide you want each grouping to be, how long your dowel is and how much space you want to take up on it.
Each of my groupings was 5 pieces of yarn, so ten when folded in half.
I had 35 groupings of 5 pieces of yarn each.
Step 6:
Once all your yarn is cut, you can begin grouping it and knotting it around the dowel the same way we did the first tester piece. Grab however many you would like in a single grouping and fold them in half. Placing the bottom of the loop at the back of the dowel, reach through the loop and pull the ends through, pulling tightly.
Once it’s all there, you can start adding details. I didn’t add many to mine; I wasn’t sure that I wanted a lot going on, but feel free to go as wild as you’d like; this is the time for your own special touch. The two easiest details are knots and braids. Knots are simple, but I show you how to do one below.
You can create a braid on one grouping or a larger braid by braiding groupings together.
You can also create knots on one grouping or create knots by taking the left side of one grouping and the right side of another and knotting those like below.
For added texture, you can also place beads between knots.
These were the beads I considered getting here. I may still get them and place them later.
Obviously, the more you do, the more time it will take, and if you desire so, you don’t have to do this in one sitting, but in total, it took me just over an hour to finish this from start to finish with a ready-to-go dowel.
I think no more than $15 and an hour of your time is a great deal considering some of these wall hangings go for around $300, wouldn’t you say ??
There you have it, your very own customizable DIY yarn wall hanging. Have fun with it, edit it, play with it until you like what you see. Easily undo a grouping to move it or add detail later.