Create a Macramé Wall Hanging Using 5 Easy Knots

1. Class Introduction: Hey guys, I'm Peggy. In this class I am going to introduce to you the magic of macrame, and it's so much fun. I'm really excited to get into this because, believe it or not, this is relatively a new subject for me. So I'm really excited to share it with you. This right here is the wall hangings that you'll be guided through and there are five knots in this wall hanging and from there, those techniques will allow you to branch out and make something of your very own design, and which will be your class project. So I'm really excited to go there but in the meantime, the things that you'll learn in this class cover materials, how to measure your core, how to prep for wall hanging, the different thickness and variations of the Macrame core that you can use. So there's a couple of things to go over, but overall, it's pretty straightforward. Once you get the hang of it, once you get going, you don't want to stop. I'll tell you that. Okay. So I'm really excited to get started with you guys, thanks so much. I'll see you in the class. 2. Tools & Materials: The tools and materials that you need to create a macrame`while hanging are very few. You don't need to go out and buy all the things. You don't have to have a tons of supplies on hand. The crucial part that you'll need is macrame chord. Traditionally, this chord a cotton rope, comes in a lot of different thicknesses and then sizes as far as the quantity that you can get. Mine is [inaudible] full like this and it was out to here. This will allow you to create a lot more than one or a much larger piece. This is not the size that you need. This is just what I have on hand, but this is the actual thickness that I have, and this is three-sixteenths of an inch. A little trick. If you want to make something smaller but you already have this thicker chord, if you separate it, then you have these much thinner sections and then you can use these as standalone chord. So that's a little trick which is fun. If you're not looking to break the bank, but you want to get a larger quantity, I would recommend getting something that's thinner than the three-sixteenths. The thinner the chord you get, the less expensive it is. There's also options like acrylic chord that you can use for macrame, which I've used to make a plant hanger and it turned out great. You can also use some thick yarn. Really it's up to you, but there are a lot of options out there that you can grab and make something real pretty with the macrame style. We're going to be using just under 200 feet of macrame chords. So know that when you're going into it, just make sure that you have 200 feet on hand. I'll show you how to measure that in the next video. You don't need a measuring tape or a ruler. You can, obviously, if you'd like to have one, you totally can. I go a little bit looser with my measurements, just because I end up cutting off the bottom part to perfect the piece anyway so it doesn't have to be exact. The next thing that you'll need are a pair of scissors. No, you don't need the amazing shiny gold scissors, but let's be real. These are a beauty. I love this. They have an awesome weight to them. I get really happy. Sometimes I look at them and I think I need to find something I need scissors for because they're so pretty. I'm done. I love these scissors. Next, you will need a wooden dowel. They're like cylinder sticks that are smooth all the way around. You have different sizes from real thin to a lot thicker. You can use any size that you want. Lengthwise, I wouldn't go more than about a foot-and-a-half, maybe two feet if you want it to be a little bit longer, but your piece itself is going to be about this wide. So come out about two inches on either side. So that's going to be about here. You can use a windle, you can use a piece of driftwood, you can use a stick that you found that's a thicker stick that will hold the weight. Anything creative that you can think of that you might want to throw in there to use. What's going to hold your chord? That's totally fine. I love creativity. So that sounds good. Anything you think of. I'm just using a stick that I found. I like the finish on the inside. Then up here, I have a piece of driftwood that I found. You can see that. There's a lot of options, but sticks are always fun because it just makes things a little more natural looking and more organic. That's it for supplies. You guys, it's really simple; so your macrame chord, any scissors, they don't have to be gold but gold scissors, and something to hang your chord on; stick, dowel, you name it. Okay, guys, let's get started. 3. Measuring Your Cord: So the first thing that we want to do is make sure that we have enough macrame cord for our project. If you want to do feet, if you don't want to set with a tape measure, if you hold it at the end, wrap it around where your elbow is and then come back around and hold onto it and just keep wrapping, about each side is going to be approximately a foot. So if you don't need exact measurements, this is a really good way to do it. This is typically what I do. Then you wrap it around however many times that you want to and that you need for feet. So this is wrapped around six times so each side would be considered six feet. So 12 feet total and then I'm just going to cut the cord so that I can have those 12 feet separate. So that's all that I need to do. Then I have this amount ready to go, set it aside and I will just cut that much for all the strands that I need. I am going to prepare 16 strands of approximately 12 feet. So I'm going to create 16 of these that wrap around and then I will set them aside. I want to show you real quick. This is the one that I just cut. So here's the ruler, I'm just holding here and dragging. You're going to see that this is going to be approximately 12 feet and you can do it this way, you can use a tape measure. I'm just doing this to demonstrate to show you that it is pretty accurate. Almost there, here we go. So you can see that is 12 feet. 4. Step 1: Attaching Your Macramé Cord: Larks Head Knot: You can choose to either create your Macrame while hanging using these hooks and putting them into the ceiling, and then hanging some yarn or string and then looping them around and then attaching your stick, just to the base here by tying knots underneath. You can also just do this on a flat surface. To me, it's a little bit easier to do it as it's hanging, just because I can see exactly where the string is and it's easier to manipulate. So I'm going to tie those little knots at the end and I'm going to place my stick just inside and now, I'm going to apply my Macrame chord. It's optional, but you can actually tie just a knot at the very end of the strand to prevent it from unraveling as you work. So I'll do that to this strand and show you just the end, just do a little knot to secure it. The first knot that we will do is called the Lark's head knot and that is to secure your Macrame chord onto the stick itself. We're going to grab the middle of one strand, to make sure that it's even by looking at the ends and so I'm going to hold this chord behind the stick upside down. So like this and then I'm going to go inside that loop over the top and through. Drag that all the way and then I'm going to secure that knot and make sure that it's snug and that is what your Larks head knot looks like. So I'm going to do that with the rest of this chord. So again, just upside down, loop up and around and through. Then get that nice and snug, and then I push these together, because once all my chord is on here, it should be pretty snug. Once your last one is placed, just go through and make sure that all of these are snug and that they have about the same amount of spacing in between all of them. In the next video we'll get started on our patterns. 5. Step 2: Square Knot: So the first knot that we're going to do is the square knot. This is a pretty basic knot. You may have done this when you were younger and you made those hemp string necklaces. So what you do is you take four strands and then you're going to grab the outer two strands. The one on the right and the one on the left. So the one on the right is going to go behind. Then you're going to hold that in place. The one on the left will go in front. This creates two loops on each side. The one that is being held in the back, you're going to hold that, pull it through to the front in between the first and the second strand. Then your going to do the opposite with the other one. So the left one that happens to be held in front, pull it through to the back. Then you're going to see how that then holds in place. You're going to scrunch that up. You might need a hold the middle two strings just to get it squished up there. Then it will hold in place just like that. To show you that again, we're going to take the next four strands after the first set. Tuck the right behind, pull the left in front, and the last string that's in front, and we'll go through the loop toward the back. Then the string that is being held in back will go through the loop and be pulled toward the front. Then you just tighten it by pulling the two cords. Also push it upward, make sure that the center strings don't get bunched and just position those, place them. I always begin with the right chord in back and the left chord in front. That's the beginning part. To create the second part of this, you're going to do the opposite that you did the first time. So the right chord will go in front, the left chord will go and back, and the left will be pulled through to the front on the right side. Then the right, which is sitting in front, will be pulled toward the back on the left side and then pull up and secure. Then since we've already done the first part of this one, we're going to do that same process again. Left side will go behind and right side will go in front. The left side will be pulled through the loop toward the front and the right side will be pulled through the left loop toward the back and then go ahead and secure that. So what that will look like from beginning to end because you want to do this all in one is the right side. For me, I start this way no matter what. So the right sides toward the back, the left sides to the front. You pull the left string through that right loop toward the back. Then the right string that's held behind, you're going to pull it through the left loop toward the front. Scoot that up and secure. The second part, we're going to do the opposite. So this time the left goes in the back, the right goes in the front, left side where it's behind, it gets pulled toward the front. Then the right side where it's in front gets pulled toward the back and then secure that, and that is your square knot. 6. Step 3: Double Half Hitch: Now the knot I'm going to show you is the double half hitch and this one can be done horizontally, which is how we're going to do it. It can also be done diagonally. We'll be doing that a little bit later, and then also vertically and just using two strands. So for this one, this is the base of the design. Chord will come around this base string, and so you don't see this, it simply acts as a base. If you were to do this vertically, you would only use two because this would act as the forming chord. That will make sense a little bit later. What we're going to do is take the chord here and hold it about here, which is where we're going to want to start to make our double half hitch, and then bring this over, and we're just going to drape it right here. This is just so that we have access to using it easily and also its pen out of the way so you won't get it confused with the rest of these chords and then what you want to do is take the cord right next to it, you see it's right next to you and as you're going along make sure that every time that you move on to the next cord, it is the next one according to the top here, not just where it lays here, because you don't want it to get jumbled you want it to be nice and even so grab your cord, grab this cord and you're just going to have this come up and under as it is and then it will just go through the center area in between the two chord and then you're going to hold the one that's the base tight and then this one, pull it all the way tight. When you're making your very first one, you don't want to bring it up all the way here, you actually want to, if unless you want it to sit right underneath your square nodes but if you want there to be a little bit of spacing, I would recommend stopping right about here and then as you go along you'll be able to pull it tighter and tighter it's just that initial space, that's where this extra one will slip up and down. Once that's secure, you don't have to worry about it. Then we're going to take that same string again, do the same thing, so it's going to come under, over to the back, and then through again. Then once that's in there, you're going to hold the space tight and drag it through. Make sure to bring this down, there we go and that's the base. So they're going to make these little circles, so you do that twice with the same string and then move on to the next. So with our next one, it's going to be easier now that this one is set, so that string is already in place, it just comes under this way over and through in between both chords and now we're going to hold this tight and it will slide all the way, so you can see that it pushes it snug right up against these other ones and then do the same thing again with the same piece, so up and over and then through and then moving on to the next one so just do that twice on each one, it's going to come up and then in between this area here is where you push it through, hold this tight and pull, if you notice that this is happening just make sure that this is tighter and then you can see it's starting to make that form and if it does start to dip too low, you want to make sure that it's through more, so just pull more, you don't want this to sit to low and have it not be equal the whole way through so if you notice that the slack right here isn't as long as these other ones, you want to adjust that and make sure that the chord that just went through is the same length. So we're going do that one more time with this one, up and around and then through the back here, hold this tight and sometimes instead of just holding it tight I actually pull against it too and that helps. So for the next one, you're going to come under and then through to the left, make sure this is tight so you can adjust this one like you want it to be and then grab the same one again, come around and then you're going to go through that circle and then hold this up, make sure you get that tight. Next one, come up in through, you're going to go to the left of that string that you're holding and then pull this up and then remember if it's doing this just to make sure that this goes tight and then you'll see that loop that it's creating and then go again and this time come up and then through this loop that you're making on the bottom and then make sure that that is through most the way hold this tight and pull, move on to the next one. So you're going to come up and through, so through this area on the left of the strand that you're using, pull it tight, position that make sure that this is tight so you can see the round area it's making and then you're going to come over through again, this time through the loop. So you can start to see how that's forming here double half hitch with a little bit of separation in between your square knot and then just continue doing that the whole way down. Anytime that it seems like it's not forming correctly, as long as you're doing the right motions typically the reason why is just because this strand that is used as a base needs to be pulled tight. So if you're just going like this and you're not having the results that you want, really just remember to pull this tight and then you can guide it where you want it to go and then I want to show you that this is a good example of what I was talking about earlier. So underneath it looks like this is my next strand, but if you look, you can actually see that this strand is connected to this next piece. So make sure you're really watching those so that you don't have any overlapping because then it breaks that pattern. As you reach the end you're going to do the same thing with that last strand except you can take this chord that you have draped over and bring it off, make sure it's tight to create this form that you want and then it's going to, remember it's up here, so you're going to hold it out, bring this up and through. Remember to keep holding it tight, pull that end and then you're just going to let it drop and that completes your row of your double half hitch. 7. Step 4: Alternating Square Knot: Now, I'm going to show you guys the alternating square knot. This will create more of a grid. It's the square knot that we did it first. You're going to grab four strands. You're going to do your square knot. If you want to leave a little bit of space, you can, so that it's not right up against there. Then go to the next four, create another square knot. Make sure that you scoot that up to where the other one is, so they are all even across. Then I'm just going to make my row of square knots first. It'll be a little easier to understand when we get to the second part, because then we'll have that row finished. When you're finished with your row, to alternate, all that you're going to do is instead of using these four strands, all these four, is you're going to combine the two with the inner four strands, the two on the inside of this one and the two on the inside of this one. You're going to make a square knot out of those four. You can leave room, you can come right up close. I'm going to leave room just because I like it to look like it can breathe a little more. You're going to do that the whole way through. The nice part is, once you have the first one done, you don't have to really figure out where those two inner strands are because it's just your next four. Then you'll notice that when you reach the end, you'll be left with two strands after the four and that's normal because that's happened over here as well. You can see this can go on as long as you want it to. You just go back to the original four, make sure that you start a little bit lower. Even if you have this row right up underneath, you'd still want to leave a little gap right here. Don't go too aside because you want it to stay nice and straight. You can keep going and it'll create a fence of that. To get to our next point, I'm actually going to continue skipping some areas here. I do want to join these back together. But instead of making this knot on the end to hit this a flat area, I'm going to make it so that eventually goes down into a V based off of this design. I'm going to take these two, the inner two and inner two, two strands, and make square knots out of each of these. Then just continue your square knots. Then this will be your last one because you're only joining these two. Then, same thing, we're just going to continue and get smaller and smaller. We're just going to join these two, these two and these two. So the inner two of this knot and the inner two on this knot. Create a square knot out of that. Pay attention to your spacing. If you have all of your rows squished together, make sure you can keep that consistency and then if you don't make sure you keep the spacing for consistency. Last two on this row. Then, we're going to connect these five. Inside of these two, going to make three to connect the four we see. Almost to the end, connect to these three. Then just this last one at the very bottom. You can see that it's made this V, that deeps into the center. This is a stylistic choice guys. I'm just showing you how you can create diagonals this way. I'm also going to show you how to create a diagonal using the double half hitch. This just shows you a way to make that netting. If you make that nice and tight, you can have different uses like rugs and things like that. That is the alternating square knot. Then we will move on to our next step. I'll show you how to create a diagonal double half hitch as well. 8. Step 5: "Triple" Half Hitch: Because the plunge is so low on this when we do our double half hitch. I'm actually going to make it. I guess you'd call it a triple, but that was shallow. Maybe right about here. We would do double. But I'm going to throw the cord around three times, so you don't lose any of that form in here, and it doesn't scrunch up because it's too small of an area. Because what you're doing is taking this area, and then bringing it down, elongating it to a little bit longer. So wrapping in around three times should give us enough to where we don't lose any of that shape. Then right here, I'm going to show you too. If I use this cord, what it's going to end up doing is coming in, and then we're going to have some thick areas here, and you're going to lose some of the shape here. So I'm going to throw this strand through the top right there just once, and then it'll give me some more to work with. So it's just the same thing that we did the first way, only we're going at an angle. You can keep this snug up against the design you just created, and then you don't really have to watch the distance. But I like to keep that breathing room and I like the transition where you can just see the straight lines through for a little bit. I'm going to keep the spacing. It's also just good to know how to watch that as it's going down. Really once you have the first few knots established, the rest it's really easy and it just follows naturally. Just don't pull tighter than it naturally wants to. But in the beginning it's where it's a little bit trickier, but just the same thing that we did the first time. So I'm going to take this outer strand, and I'm going to tuck it behind the other side. Another difference here is that we're only going to bring this down to the center. We're not going to go back up. We're actually going to use a strand from this side to do that. So to begin, we're just going to bring it from under, and then through, and then make sure you're holding this one tight and bring it up. You can bring this up a lot higher. I'm spacing it according to how much I want the gap to be in-between the next design. So I'm going to keep it at about here. Then I'm going to take the same strand, come up and through, and then hold this tight and pull. Don't pull too much, because then you're going to end up pulling the spacing that you just created. Normally I'd stop here and go to the next, but I'm going to go around one more time. Pull this tight, and you have that space. Then you move to the next one, and same thing that we've been doing. Just make sure that you don't pull too tight, keep that space that you want, go around again, and one more time. This is where you are at a point where you don't have to watch that too much, because now it's got the spacing set, and as you go down, it should have created a little bit of a memory. If you pull too tight on one of these, what happens is the rest of these start bunching, and then you also lose that crisp line. So that's one of the main things to think about when you are making sure that this line is parallel to this one, or if you're just creating a diagonal without a guide to use. If you find that that happens and you're pretty far down and you don't know what to do about something up here, you can go to the back, pull, see where it's coming from, and then adjust it. Then when you get to the center, you can see this last square knot down here, and there's two strands coming out of the center. We're only going to take the one that belongs to this side. Then you have one row done on that side, and we're going to do on the other side as well. We're going to take the strand that we had draped over from the middle, from the other side and drop that, and then we're going to take the strand on the outer part of this side. We're not going to do the same thing that we did on this side where we tucked it through, and the reason why is because this side actually comes out already, and so we wouldn't lose any of that space in doing so. I'm bringing this over and draping it over the top, and then just performing the same knot with the same distance on this side. The difference, however, is the direction. We are not going the same direction. So before, we were going around into the left. But you can see that this is your outer area, so you're going to pull it this way instead, and when this comes up in through. If you want it to the left, there wouldn't be anything to put it through, so you want to put it through to the right. It's just mirroring what you did. So you're not pulling this one tight, you're pulling the left one tight now. Then make sure that you have the same spacing here as the other side, and then proceed with mirroring. Just keep in mind that now the cord that you're holding tight is this one coming from right to left. So you're going to hold this one nice and tight. Then once you have your three, you're going to move on to the next strand, come up around to the right through, hold the left one tight, and then pull this one up. Wrap that around two more times, and then keep moving down. Then you come to your last one. Nothing fancy, just finishing it off. This is a good spot to check the balance to make sure that you have symmetry on both sides. 9. Step 6: Double Up!: Now that we have the diagonal shape, one of my favorite things is to add a double layer to this. I'm going to add another layer and to do that I'm going to do it snug. So I don't really have to put a lot of thought into it, I just have to make sure that I follow the same steps, make sure I know which one to tighten. So on this side it's the left to right and it's going to go right up against the one on top. Once you get to the bottom, go ahead and create the first part of that square knot. In the next video I'm going to show you a new technique. So don't finish the square, not yet and I will meet you in the next lesson. 10. Step 7: Half Knot: Once you get to the bottom, go ahead and create the first part of that square knot. That right there is your half knot. So it's the first part of your square knot, if you continue doing your half knot the whole way down, which all that means is the same technique, but instead of once you're finished with the top part switching sides. So the first part of it where the right side goes behind, the left side goes in front, then tighten and then the next part, it flips and the right side goes in front. What you're going to do is continue the same way the whole time. So I started with the right in the back, left in front and I'm just going to do that again. So basically just the first part of that square knot which is why it's called a half knot, and I'm going to do it again, and again, and I'm just going to keep doing the half knot, so the same technique in the same direction, and you'll see as you keep going, it begins to twist. So see how it's actually twisting around, so if you continue going, it's going to create a swirl. So we are going to make a bunch of little strands of these half knots to create these spirals. But instead of, and you can guys can do this any way you want to, and of course this is all just to introduce technique to you. I didn't tie my ends off, but even if I had, I can just undo that knot because what I'm going to do is unravel a few of these, and I'm going to pick the ones that I'm going to do. So I'll probably do these two, and in each one of these there's three strands. So that's why I'm unraveling two, so I can grab four those, so just get those opened up and it might take a minute because they're pretty well wrapped. One of the cool things about the macrame cord too, is that if you want to make a smaller project, or you want your strands to be thinner, you can always unravel them and then use each one of these strands as its own court itself. Because all it's doing, even in those strands, there's even more connected, so really they just keep spinning around themselves. Then do it to the one next to it. It helps to just take the strand and twist it, and then you can see it opening up. So not necessarily knotted, they just need to get out of their twist, and once you have two those strands unraveled, we're going to take four of the pieces and create half- knots the whole way down. So we're just going to act as though these are the larger pieces, take four of the strands, and I'm picking the four that seem to me like they're most together, and then going to make some tiny half knots. I'm going to warn you now that this is time-consuming when they're smaller, but it looks really pretty and it's worth it, and then just keep going the same direction so no square knots, just these half knot the whole way around. As you're working it and it begins to spiral, like this is happening right here. So see how this is starting to spiral and turn inward instead of twisting my arms or like twisting this out, you want to let it keep going. So I'm going to switch from this side, flip it around and start working on the backside, and that's just going to keep happening as it twists and it doesn't matter because it's doing the exact same thing on each side. It's just an easier handle, and you'll feel when it naturally wants to flip because it's spinning as you go. You'll notice that this string gets much shorter on the sides as you go because it's all scrunched up into this design. So I just am going to keep that hanging as is, and then I'm going to do the same thing on this side. I'm going to count my strings ends, so I have 1, 2, 3, 4 and then it looks like I did these two. So I go 1, 2, 3, 4 and then I will unravel these two, and before you start going on the right side, I just want to show you that in this one I took my right side, put it behind, my left side in front, and that was how my half knot was, it's spiraling in, so I'm going to make this one the opposite, I'm going to have it spiraling in as well. So I'm going to choose four here, and then the only difference is instead of putting the right side on the back like I normally do, I'm going to put the left on the back and right on front, and just do that the whole way through. Right on top, left in the back, bring that through, and I'm going to do that the whole way down. You can see that this one's going in and this one's coming in this way, and you can do as many of these as you want. You don't have to separate the strands, you can do that. You can make it even smaller with this strand. So this is just an option of something that you can do as the strands get looser, and something that I want to do just because I like extra texture. See these loose strands that are thinner, they weren't included in my half knots, so I like how that looks. I'm going to add some more of these because I like how it adds dimension to have the multiple sizes. So I'm going to unravel a few more of these. 11. Step 8: Clean Up Ends: Obviously, you guys can do any variations of any of this, but when you are finished, what you want to do is clean up the bottom. That can be straight across, you can have it cascading and staggered in different lengths, you can have it coming into a V, you can have it coming out from the middle down. It's whatever you want. For this one, I'm going to have it coming into a soft V at the bottom. I'm just going to cut that, and to make sure that my cut is good, I'm going to start on the middle area, crink it to the length that I wanted, then cut that off. Then what I want to do is taken the figure out on the sides, how far down I want that to go, or how much further up? Cut that as a base. Then doing it under a slight angle, so that I can retain that shape, and do the same thing on this side. Then I'm going to match those and then make any adjustments if any part looks like it could use a little more off, and then the same thing on this side. Then when you have your cut, you are all done. Then you have this real pretty macro-may wall hanging. 12. Bonus Step: Add Fringe!: Now that you're done, this part is definitely optional. But what I love to add at the end of most of all of my woven projects is some fringe. What I did was I took the scraps and I cut them about this long. I unraveled them so they are the smaller cord size. I'm going to do the lark's head knot through the actual macramé. You can do this toward the bottom. You can do it in a V. You can do it straight across. I'm just going to go just with a slight V down to about right here and then up. I'm going to take the center, the lowest point that I want to go, and choose an area that I think that it will sit well in. I'll probably go through this hole here. I'm going to feed this through, find the hole, grab that fringe, pull it through, and then tighten. So I have that there. Then, I'm just going to do the whole way up right here. Once all of that is placed, I'm also going to cut that so it has some clean lines. Then, fluff that out a little bit, and then you are done. Now, step back and admire your beautiful macramé piece. I get really excited when these are finished because I stare at them for a little bit too long. Admire what you've made and then start on something of your very own. We'll go over that in the project in the next video. 13. Project Time!: Thank you guys so much. I know that the techniques that you learned in this class will allow you to branch off and create a design of your very own, which is exactly what this class project is going to be. With the notes that you learned in this class and any of the materials that we discussed, including any that you might come up with that you find as a cool incorporation, please feel free. I love to see the creativity that you guys bring out in these projects. Make a wall hanging with your very own design. This can be in smaller scale, larger scale, as big, as small as you want to. I even have one that I recently made and it's just very bitty. Please have fun with this. I'm so excited to see what you guys come up with. Thank you so much again and I'll see you next time.