I’ve needed a craft project in my life. I’ve spent a bunch of time cleaning up my craft room (which quickly becomes our crap room), and noticed that my work bench needed a little something. After perusing Pinterest and taking stock of my supplies, I decided to try my hand at making yarn tassels.
Tassels are super easy to make– the perfect, mindless craft to do while watching a movie or a preseason football game. Yes, I just finished this as we watch the Ravens preseason game, which started a few minutes ago. Can you believe it’s football season already? Me neither.
Anyway, here’s how I made the tassels. First, I took my yarn and grabbed the end in my hand. Then, I wrapped the yarn from my hand to my elbow, back and forth in circles, until I’d circled my arm 15 times. This created a good length of tassel for what I was looking to create.
Next, I took the yarn off my arm and cut at the top and again at the bottom. Now I had about 30 (if I counted correctly as I wrapped… and let’s be real, I’m easily distracted) strings of yarn about the same length as each other.
After this step, I cut a piece of yarn and wrapped it around the cut bunch of yarn, knotting it securely at the midpoint of the group of yarn. I also knotted it at the top.
At this point, I had an unruly yarn octopus. Time to tassel. I cut another piece of yarn and knotted it around the yarn, which at this point has folded in half over the hanger I just made.
I left a little tail of yarn, then started wrapping the long yarn around the yarn until it was at its end. Then, I knotted the end of that string with the tail I’d left earlier. I trimmed the leftover yarn and tucked the knot under the freshly wrapped yarn.
That’s it, folks. Each tassel takes a minute or so to make. They go really quick!
I had light pink, coral, teal, white and gray yarn, so I made tassels for a few days as we vegged on the couch. Then, when I had more than I needed, I grabbed a birch branch that I brought back from Maine last year and strung the tassel along the branch. You can easily go in and shorten the length of your tassels if they are too long by tying a knew knot and trimming the excess yarn.
When I had the branch filled to a capacity I was happy with and in a pattern I liked, I wrapped gray yarn around both ends and created a hanger for this new tassel art. Then, I hammered a nail into the wall above my craft room workbench and hung up my masterpiece!
How cute did that turn out!? It’s just the pop of color and texture my craft room needed. That teal wall had been empty for too long!
A Smith of All Trades 