Made: Woven Wall Hanging

From: Creative Bug Blog/  A Beautiful Mess/  A Pair and a Spare

Usually, I'm slow to notice trends.  I don't read about them, and usually I don't really care.  I like what I like, you know?  But if there's a trend that centered around a DIY, I'm there.  I love when I figure that out.  and that's what I fell about this trend of woven wall hangings.

I am seeing them EVERYWHERE.  I couldn't read a DIY blog without it popping up, y'all.  And the more I saw them, the more I wanted one.  So, I decided to try my hand at one.  I've woven before, but now I don't have a loom.  I've meant to buy a new one, but never think of it when I have the money-- and there's a new Fossil Store in my town, and other things and places I wanted to go and things I wanted to do.  So I never bought one.  But that didn't stop me!  I made this:

...using yarn and some cardboard! 

That's the best part about weaving-- you can use almost anything and weave.  If you want a full tutorial on the process of weaving little wall hanging, A Beautiful Mess has a great one here.  If you don't own a loom (and don't want to buy one) you can substitute a piece of corrugated cardboard at least as big as you want your hanging.  Then cut some notches in the top and bottom (directly across from each other) to weave your warp onto.  Then you can follow the tutorial as written. 

The good thing about using cardboard instead of a loom, is that you can draw a guide for your image onto the cardboard.  That way you don't have to wing it.  I wanted some triangles in the "Flying Geese" pattern I love on quilts. (Note: The link leads you to a page about the Underground Railway "Quilt Codes."  I don't want to hear about how the theory of the quilt codes were "disproved."  I like the story, whether true or not.  It speaks to the ingenuity of the slaves and their allies while trying to escape an unjust system.)  So I wanted some version of it for my wall.

I used some neutral wool, and some Noro yarn for the triangles, a Japanese wool with awesome colors.  The weaving was really fast!  I finished it in one day.  I started it in the morning with my coffee, and finished it while I was watching Arrow.  I held the yarn double for the weft to make it thicker.  I like how it looks.

    
I hope you give it a try!  It was a satisfying DIY with a great end product.  If you do try it, make sure to link back so I can see it too!

Branch Weaving

Branch weaving showed up in my Pinterest feed, and I thought it looked really cool.  I really wanted to try it that minute.  But I didn't have a branch.  Because the city was living under 3 feet of snow.  And I don't pull branches of trees, because that's bad for them, and I'm not a 10 year old, so I waited until I came across one laying on the ground.

Last week, D and I went on a death-defying hike.  The trail was covered in ice.  So much ice!  What wasn't ice was knee-deep snow.  It was beautiful, but treacherous.  That bridge in the background?  Completely iced over.

But, I found a branch, and during one of my fave TV shows, I set to weaving on it.  When I finished, I thought it looked nice:

But, I had no idea what its use was or what I would use it for.  I needed to finish one of these, for some reason.  Now that I have, It sat on the coffee table for a few days.

When we came across these bottles on sale for $1, I knew where I could put my new weaving:

So now it lives on my bookshelf.  Making my books a little more interesting.

12 posts of Christmas: Handmade Gifts

Dude.  I love Christmas.  I'm not talking about the religious aspect of the holiday, I'm not into that part.  I'm into the gift-giving, meal-making, goodie-baking, fun-spirited aspect of the holiday.  So, in honor of the holiday season, I'm going to have 12 posts dedicated to the things I love about Christmas.  

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Isn't giving presents the best?  I love giving my friends and fam pressies, but often people are weird about it if there's no special occasion.  Every once and a while I will find something that I HAVE to buy for a friend, and they would give me a hard time about getting them something.  With some friends its goes so far as I wait for their birthdays, and then give them all the things I found along the way.   What happened to us as a society, where a friend can't give another friend something to perk up their day without bringing on the Inquisition?

ANYWAYS, one of my favorite things about Christmas, is that I can give gifts, and no one gives me the third degree about it.  One of the things I love to do is make the gifts I give to people.

I've always been crafty, but I never really gave handmade gifts at first.  I didn't have many people in my life who appreciated all the effort and time that went into making something.  So I kept most of the early things I made.  But I'm a knitter, and you can have entirely too many hats, scarves, mitts and sweaters so, one Christmas I gave away something I made.  And it was a hit!


There is a practical side to handmaking your gifts too.  A few of our Christmases were heavily budgeted for me and D as I was unemployed, then underemployed for a couple of years.  I made almost every present I gave that year.  Not only were they not costly, they were deeply personal to each person who received a gift.

Of course, pulling off a handmade Christmas takes a lot of planning.  I started thinking about Christmas gifts I wanted to make in August.  I searched for patterns, and started making gifts even if I didn't know exactly who they would go to.  And, if I made something and liked it too much to give away, there was time to find something else to make, or to make another one.  Not that I have ever done that, or anything.

For gift giving, I tend to stick to small things- hats or mitts and the like.  This way I don't have to worry about sizing, and you can never really have too many of either of these living up here in the "great white north."

Here is one of the gifts I made for a friend this year (Oh I hope she doesn't read this blog...):

I didn't knit this.  I was on a weaving kick for a while, and this is one of the scarves I made.  A friend commented on how much she loved it, so she's getting it for Christmas!

Another gift I've made for this year:

A Sunflower Tam!  I love this hat, and I have one for myself.  A great thing about being a knitter is that knitted gifts are in high demand usually.  But I have given other types of crafty gifts too.  A few years ago, I made some quilts for my grandmother, my mother and my mother-in-law; and I have made quilted makeup bags in the past.

But it really doesn't matter what kind of handmade gift you give; its really just the fact that you took some time, and thought about someone enough to give them not only a present, but you time too. And this is how I know that handmade presents best represent what I am trying to give to my friend and family; because I am always grateful when someone will spend their time on me.

What handmade gifts have you given? Why did you give it?