Create a Modern Tassel Wall Hanging

1. Intro: Hey guys, I'm Ashley Harrison, an interior designer here and for site, a cute little town just south of Atlanta. And in this class we're gonna be making this modern castle wall hanging. So full disclosure. I actually made this class a couple of years ago. And at the time I was just a stay-at-home mom who love to get creative around the house. But I discovered that fiber arts projects in general, or just shockingly therapeutic, they're really fun. It's a fun way to add texture to your space. So if you're familiar with my other class, I'm also teaching the function formula, the interior design elements that every space needs and one of the essential elements as textures. So this is just one of many ways to incorporate that essential element into your space. And you'll find that it's just really interesting and amazing experience for me in a little bit of rope and yarn into something beautiful as well. So I'm excited for you to take this class and let's get started. 2. Materials: So here are the materials you're going to need for this class. We are making this modern castle wall hanging. As you can see, I am using three strand macro make cord. This is five millimeter, three strand cord, as you can see here. And one thing I will say, in theory, it is easier to use a single-strand cord. So when you're brushing it out, you're not having to kinda unravel each strand and then brush. But my personal experience, this was actually my only experience with single-strand cord. I really didn't like it. So kind of a side-by-side comparison. You can see that this, the single-strand cord is a little bit more bleach. The strands are significantly thicker and comparison, this is more hair-like and it's kinda silky. It was easier to just brush out the whole thing. Whereas this one there were just fibers flying everywhere in the air. It was a lot bigger. It has like these kind of thick and thin moments were almost looks like knots or slugs in the fiber and I just really didn't like it in general. So if you have had a different experience and working with single-strand cord, I do recommend five millimeter, that's what I'll be using. But you could obviously, goats go bigger with your chord. I don't think I'd recommend going smaller, but this is your you do, you, but like I said, I personally preferred this one to this to this brand that I use. Both of these were bought on Amazon. So I will go ahead and link the one that I like. But of course, if you prefer single-strand, that is technically easier to do if you found the one that you like. But I will be using restraint cord. Okay. So you're also going to need some chunkier yarn. I personally prefer chunky as opposed to using standard yarn. If you watched my last class on how to make tassels or how to adorn your home decor with chunky tassels. You'll probably recognize the yarn that I'm using this as my leftovers. Basically, I like how they go together though. And really this is a great project to use up any old yarn that you have. So it doesn't have to be chunky. But the one nice thing about having a chunky is that when you wrap it, you can get them pretty even you can just kinda put them side by side by side. Whereas with this kind of thin standard yarn, it's a lot harder to wrap evenly. So you might get some thicker and thinner spots and you might even have some cord shining through. So you'd probably have to double up your yarn. But honestly, this is not a project where you have to go rush out and buy unless you want to. But if this is a really great project for using leftovers, especially the crampy curly ends that aren't always great for the project. So you might be, if you're doing other wall hangings, it's not ideal. And so this is perfect because you're wrapping it tight and so you're not going to see kinda grumpy stuff going on. So I don't know if that makes sense or not, but Okay. So you're also going to need a rod. This was a 36 inch towel. It's seven-eighths of an inch in diameter. I got this from Hobby Lobby, but you can totally go to any craft store that you want to. You can even go to Home Depot and get a super long one, which would look really cool over your bed. Or if you have like a really long or really large wall space that you're wanting to cover. So that's totally an option. In my case, my wall space that I'm looking to cover is pretty small. I actually wanted to shrink my rod just a smudge. When you pick out your dowel, you'll notice they paint the n's in it so that you can quickly grab whatever diameter you're going for. It's a way for them to sort it too and their bins, but it leaves you with a painted edge. So I've already cut off my ends. Like I said, it was 36 inch rod. I shrunk it by 1 " on either side by cutting it. But you could also totally just sanded off with some sandpaper if you didn't want to lose any material. If by chance you don't have tools on hand, you can actually go to Home Depot or Lowe's. They have saws, some hand saws and their lumber section. So that's actually what I did. Were military family were hopping around all the time and so our tools are actually in storage. So yeah, so that's an option for you if you don't have tools on hand, go to Home Depot or Lowe's and just cut it yourself. Okay. So let's see. You will also need a piece of paper and a marker or pen or pencil, but something to write with. You'll see in the next video we're talking about putting together a cheat sheet for yourself. And we'll get into that. Like I said in the next video, you'll also want a ruler. Potentially, I am using myself cutting mat. You can see that it has basically a ruler built-in all around. And so it's a super easy kinda measuring tool using that mat. It's also dual-purpose, the cutting mat. It's a self-healing mat. And so when you go to brush out your tassels, it just makes it so much easier so you're not damaging the surface that you're working on. I'd recommend a hard surface, not not sauce. It's not catching on like say a rug or carpet. So you'll want to work on like would potentially or tile. But if you don't want to scratch up your surface, if you like I said, if you're working on a table, you don't want to scratch up the wood, are working on your wooden floor or whatever. So using a self-healing mat is really the way to do that. So self-healing mat, you also want scissors, will use that to cut our tassels. And I don't know if I forgot anything. Oh, here's the phone. This is just an old phone. I'm going to use it as my calculator. So if you have a calculator laying around, grab that, and let's keep moving. 3. Cheat Sheet: This may look like a lot, but this is without question the most important part of this project. So this is the pre-planning phase. This is our roadmap. It's our cheat sheet. It's our grand plan for this project. And it tells us how long to make this tassel, as well as this gathering, not how many to-do in each categories of length as well as color. If I were to just show you how to make this thing and then send you on your way and say, okay, now just randomize the length, the color, and you're good to go. Like that would be a huge disservice. Because if you're familiar with crafting or really making anything, it is so much more difficult, in my opinion to randomize something as opposed to having more strategic approach. So like a methodical step one, step two, step three kind of approach, it's much, much more difficult to be subjective about something and try to just figure it out on the fly. So this may feel like I said, it may feel like a lot, but it is going to make your life so much easier in this project and you'll just be able to kinda bus these out really quickly. So I'm gonna show you how to make this. So the very first step, if you'll notice over here, you didn't see this in the materials portion. This is a paper cutter. I figured you probably just have scissors lying around if you don't have a paper cutter and everybody has some tapes, so not a big deal. Hopefully you guys have these at your disposal. So what you're gonna do, this is my cheat sheet, my personal tutee. That's what we're gonna be making, so okay, take your two papers. One side and this one we're going to cut in half. Half fish doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be close. And then we're going to tape it together. Okay. Tape it together. Alright, I'm gonna flip it over so I'm not writing on tape and just kinda tuck it under this little guy. Alright, so that's the first step. Now we're going to take our other paper and we're going to need this. This is where our notes are gonna be. I can set aside this over here. Okay, so the very first step is figuring out how many tassels we're going to need to cover our rod. So in my case, like I mentioned before, this was a 36 inch rod. I cut off 1 " on either end. That leaves me with a 34 inch rod and I want a two inch margin on either end. So that leaves me with a 30 inch rod. Okay. So 30 " of rod and I what I need to know is how much space does this occupies? So I'm gonna be using three chords every time. So you can see there's three separate ropes and here basically to make one single tassel. So I want to know how much space does that occupy? Now, I'm spelling this out because if you're using a different size cord, this is five millimeter, but say you're using seven or nine or whatever you're using, then you need to know how much space that's going to occupy it on your rods. So you're gonna just kinda threaded on. Obviously you don't have this yet. I'll show you how to make this in the next step, but this is kind of a preview, but you will want to make a mock up to see how many you're going to need. And so once it's on there, you can kind of use your way here. Hopefully, I'm not moving it too much, but it ends up being about three-quarters of an inch. So what I'm gonna do is take 30 " of rod divided by 0.75, which is three-quarters. Oops, oops, oops, I think I hit the negative. So 30/0, 0.75 is 40. Okay. Take your paper and your pen. I'm going to write 40 tassels. Okay, So I need 40 tassels to fill my rod. Alright, so now I wanna know, I'm gonna get back to this one. I first want to know how long my tassels should be. So like I said, I have 30 " of tassels on my rod. And I want to know how long my longest tassel should be. So if you saw my video on how to make a three-tier macro, my tassel on break chandelier. You'll know that I am totally obsessed with the golden mean. And I love the golden mean because I love being able to just punch numbers into a calculator and be told how long or how wide or whatever, whatever that proportion should be like that, like the perfect proportion that is pleasing to the eye. So instead of having to guess, it's just so much easier to punch a number in the calculator. So that's what we're gonna do. You're gonna take 30 " or however long your rod is that you want to fill? Mine is 30 " worth of tassels. I'm going to take 30 and multiply it by 0.618. So that is, that is the magic number. And I'm going to multiply it. I get 18.54. So I am actually going to round this down. I'd rather use the length of this to make my life a little bit easier. So I'm gonna say 18 ". So the longest tassel loops alongside the longest I want my tassel to be is 18 ". Okay, So this is I've already, as you can see, kinda preplanned. I figured that I want six different links of tassels. We'll get into that in a minute. Honestly. Typically you wanna do odd numbers. So I really could have done, I could have done seven of these. I liked the spacing. I might add one more. I don't know. We'll see. Okay. So this is my extra, extra long right here. And now I want to know how long should my gathering not be for this extra, extra long tassel? So I'm gonna take that number 18. I'm going to multiply it again by 0.618. I get the number 11 and then a decimal. So I'm going to round it. I get 11. Now, if I were to count down and do 11 ", That's a really long gathering, not so I kinda want to flip this upside down. And I want to use the other side of that decimal or I'm sorry, of that number. So I'm going to count 11 " up, which is right here. Okay. And this is my extra, extra long. So that's how long my gathering naught is going to be, my tassel length. So now I want to find what is going to be the smallest tassel that I'm going to make. So I'm going to use that exact same number. I'll do it again. So 18 " I want to again find a number that's kind of it's it's proportionate. It's like pleasing to the eye in relation to the other length. So I'm going to take 18, multiply it by 0.618. Golden decimal, love it, I get 11 is the same number. But this time I want that longer. That longer one. So I want you to have a smaller to a longer. I want to take the longer number. So that's gonna be here. This is my extra, we'll say extra small. I'm tempted to add one more extra because I kinda wanted to seven. But we're going to stick to the plan. I'm going to stick to six. That's what I did before and I think it looks nice. Okay, so now I want to find the, again my gathering not that length. And so I'm gonna do the exact same thing that I did before. I'm going to take 11, multiply it by 0.618, and I get a number that's pretty close to seven, it's like six and three-quarters. So again, I'm going to count this is my longer side, so I'm gonna do 123,456.5. It's like here. Okay, so that's my extra small, so my smallest gathering, not that I'm gonna do is that in relation to this overall length. So instead of having to do that step for every single length of tassel, because that feels like maybe a lot. Now I'm just going to go in sub-divide fairly evenly. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be close. So I want to have four numbers in here. Like I said, I have six overall. If you let's say that you wanted, you wanted more. You could do, you could do eight different sizes, you could do three different sizes. You can do whatever you want to do. I'd probably recommend doing probably no fewer than five, but this is yours. So you do, you, you do what makes sense for your project? I am gonna go in and just add four more. That wasn't a perfect, but that's okay. It really doesn't have to be it has to be like I said, it needs to be close. And I might, I might use this one for my guide, but, but I wanted to show you how quick you can just add in those lengths. So this one, it's, again, I'm going to put it in for little notches. There we go. So this is my extra small, small, medium, large, extra large. I mean do the same here. Extra small, small, medium, large, extra large. So now I have a cheat sheet. Now I know how long. My largest tassel is going to be how long that gathering not will be for that large tassel as well as the small one and every size in-between. Okay, So the next step is how many tassels do I make of each size? And how many color or I'm sorry, what colors do I make? Like how many in each size. So each of those categories. So that's where this guy comes in. Okay, So I know there have 40 tassels and in my case I have six different sizes. I've got extra small, small, medium, large, extra large, and extra, extra large. Now I need to distribute this number 40 across the board, so 40 does not divide evenly by six. Fair to do it? It's this number is 6-7, which means it's a little bit of both, so it's not a perfect and it doesn't have to be perfect, but I can do however many I want. Let's say that I wanted to do eight of these, four of these, three of these, like it's really, you can do it however you want. I personally want it to be a little more evenly distributed. So mine are gonna be a series of sixths and sevenths to make up 40. So I've got, we'll say six extra small, small, medium, large, extra large. And I'll do seven extra, extra large, which makes up 40 tassels and all. Okay, so now I need to know how or what colors are going to be in that size. So I have four colors, if you guys remember, I have these four colors. So I'm going to call this, this is D, this is dark gray. This is going to be G for gray. This is gonna be P for pink and B for brown. So I'm just going to leave those kind of up there as a reference. Hopefully you guys can still see this. Okay? Alright, so now I have, let me actually let me do it like that. Okay? Alright, so for colors, so I've got pink, I've got dark gray, gray, and brown. And I'm going to just do that all the way down. Okay? So now I wanna know what, what colors I'm going to do in this size. So basically I just have to add up to make six. So e.g. I'm going to say, okay, I want to pinks, one dark gray to graze and then one brown and that makes six. So two plus one plus two plus one is six. Okay, I'm gonna do, let's say one pink, too, dark gray to gray and to brown. And that makes seven. This one, let's say I'll do two pink, too dark gray, 1 gy and two brown. This one I'm going to say to pink to dark gray to gray, one brown. And this one for six and then do one pink, too dark gray to gray, one brown. And let's do two pink, one dark gray to gray, and two brown. Now, really to know that this is evenly distributed, in theory, each of these would add up to ten. It doesn't. I know that this one's a little bit less. I'm pretty sure this one's like 11. This one is nine. So it's close. It's not perfect, but it's close and I'm okay with that. But if you wanted it to be like the colors be perfectly distributed, That's how you would do it. You'd make sure that this adds up to ten. Okay? So this, like I said, grand plan. Here it is. Now we know exactly what colors to make, how long and how, you know, how whatever, how long to make them, what size, what color. And now we're gonna get into how to actually make these things. 4. Knot Length: This is the same size cord. This is my extra long length right here. You'll notice it does go beneath that. That's because when I cut the cord, I wanted to give myself a little bit of margin. And so it does go beneath, but this is the extra long length. But you'll notice that the gathering that is two different sizes. So let me explain myself. So what's so cool about this chart? I didn't want to over-complicate it when we need it. But what's so neat about it is there's actually two different proportions. Essentially, I have this small to large proportion where we have, this is the extra long gathering, not two chord. But if you actually flip this on its head, you can get an extra long gathering not to a shorter chord. So when you put these two together, it makes up one extra long lengths. And what's cool about that is it gives you two different lengths of gathering. Not, but they, they have a nice relationship. Like it's pleasing to the eye that this, to that the beauty of doing that it kinda mixing it up is once these are all strong on the rod, someone wouldn't be able to look at our peace and quickly crack the code. Like figured out the pattern like, Oh, all the short ones have a gathering, not like this and all the long ones have one like this. It kinda breaks it up and makes it look a little more complicated and a little more random, but in a good way. So this just gives a little like an extra layer of interests by, by varying that, that gathering not so again, it's the same chart. It's just going from here to here versus here to here. I wanted to point that out before I move on. Let me just also mentioned the plan. So whenever I have a two, I'm going to make one that is a short gathering naught and then one that's along gathering not and whenever it's a one, I'm going to shake it up, decide I don't know. I flip a coin or something, but yeah, there'll be a little bit of each type per size. So I just wanted to throw that out there and make sure I explained myself as to why I had two different lengths of gathering, not for the same length of chord for that tassel. So, yeah, in the next video we're going to talk about how to actually make these things. And let's get to it. 5. Cutting the Cord: Now we're at the fun part. This is when we really get to go to town and making nice. So the very first step in creating this tassel is actually to cut our chord. So what, what I recommend doing is actually taking just one size and working on one size at a time. And since we created our roadmap, we know exactly how many colors to do in each of those sizes. So it makes it really easy. Okay, so in order to cut this chord, There's really two different ways of doing it. So this was my extra, extra large. I am going to, let's do r will do the next smaller size. This is our extra small. So what you'd have to do is take your rod, you have that kinda zero-point. I'm marked off on your paper and you've got to put it around your rod. If you don't account for that, then you'll obviously you lose that length. That just around the rod is its gosh, a couple of inches, like two-and-a-half inches. So that's kind of important. So make sure you have your rod, have it at that zero point. And you can hold it here. And you're going to just pull until you get to your extra small. Now, I would recommend even though it's the extra small, I wouldn't go to that mark at actually go probably to the next mark so that you have pieces that are just a little bit longer so that you're able to trim it at the end. If you have it at exactly that length, you really, if you're trimming it, then it's gonna be significantly shorter. So I would just recommend, even though it is extra small, you probably want to go to the small size. Then you can cut it down. You can use your measurement tool to still know where to trim it down. So you're going to put it around and kinda hold it at that zero point. And then you're going to cut. And it doesn't have to be exact, it just has to be close. So my scissors over here, I'm going to trim it. Okay, so now I know this is, you know, kind of an example length for my extra small. So there's, like I said, there were two real different ways of cutting your chord. One is to just lay it across, match the end and cut. This is the slow but precise way. Even in can you see me? Hopefully you can. Let me do that again just in case. So like I said, you match up the end over here and then make sure it's pulled pretty tight. And then you're going to cut. So I'm doing three chords will make up one tassel. So I, if you go to your whole cheat sheet, I know that I need six extra small. So six times three means I need 18. Okay. So the other option, if you didn't wanna do that, I feel like that is way too slow for me. Remember that this was the original. What you can do is match the end, pull it kinda taught in your hand. And then you'll just wrap it around, pull it again, wrap it around, and keep going around and around and around until you have 18 chords. 18 of these in your hands right now have five. And then we'll just cut. And I'll actually do it right now. So you see, when you get to the last one, you'll just cut all the loops. Let me go back up here. I'm going to cut those loops. And now I have a bunch of chord that's essentially the same length. So like I said, there's two different ways. This is the more precise, slower way. And this is the faster, less precise way. 6. Tassels: Now we're ready to make our modern tassels. So this is how it looks before it gets to this nice fluffy phase. That's when you brush it out. That'll be the next video. But right now we're working on this little guy. So I've cut my pile of large here. I have 21 chords, since I have seven largest, largest hustles that I'm making. So each one, each tassel takes three chords. So let me set that aside. You're going to take out three of your chord and set the rest aside. And what you do is just kinda match the ends. And you're going to wrap it around your rod. And you're gonna kinda match the ends at the bottom as well and pull taught, but you want to get these kind of close together. So the biggest thing is you really want these side-by-side by side like that. And you're going to just hold it kinda taught with your thumb. So I am going to take the end of my yarn and kinda overlay it or create a tail of about two to 3 " and just kinda pinch that under my thumb as well. And now we're going to make a loop. So this is the beginning of our gathering, not we're going to create a loop. And depending on how long you want your gathering not to be that tie. This little guy. That will tell you how long you want your loop. So in my case, here is the line that I'm going to, I'm sorry, right here. This is the large right here. So I want to go about 2 " beneath that. So you don't need a super long loop like that where it's super long. You don't want it super short either. So about 2 " beneath the line that you're wanting to go to. So about there, I'm just going to pinch, kinda finish that loop and pinch it under my thumbs. And now is the tricky part. So I'm going to wrap this about three times just to kinda get it started on the rod and it'll kinda tangle itself or get tangled on itself. Well, it's on the rod, but that's totally fine, totally normal. We're just going to slip it off. So the whole point of that was to get it started on the rod so that it's the exact size it needs to be to be able to get back on the rod. So if I started at off the rod, it Just a guess game of how big to make these loops. Since we want them tight on the rod, you want to start it on it. So now, now that we know where, where this yarn is going to be, we're just going to continue that. And one thing you wanna do is just hold the chord like make sure that they're not super tangled, are kinda wrapping on itself. You do is some of them are overlapping and whatnot, you might get kind of a bumpy gathering. Not so I just kinda like to keep them in their place. And yeah, you just start going into town wrapping, wrapping, wrapping. So I'm going to wrap it until it's about 2 " above the end of my loop. And I'm also going to use my guide here to know exactly how long I want my gathering not to be. So if you'll notice, it's kinda curving down, that's totally normal. That's what it does. At the end when it's all finished, you can kinda pull it back up and shape it. Now right here I got a little loose. I'm actually going to go back and fix that. It doesn't really matter. Once these are side-by-side, you're not going to notice stuff like that, but I just want to keep them a little bit more consistent as I'm wrapping. So that was just I got a little bit loosey-goosey right there. You kinda wanna keep it a little more taught. Okay, So I'm just, as you can see, it's kinda getting on itself. So it actually helps to curve it down. Sometimes it does it naturally, but you can also do it yourself so that it doesn't keep getting twisted or whatever tangled on itself. Alright, and I'm just going to see where we're at. So, oh, I want a little bit long, so I'm just going to undo a little. It doesn't really matter. These don't have to be perfect or exact, but I just want to kinda keep with my plan and be consistent so that's pretty close. Okay, so now here's that loop. I'm just going to cut my tale about four or 5 ". And now you just drop it through that loop so you could go over, you could go under. It. Really doesn't matter. I haven't noticed a difference. I usually just go with whatever seems more natural and isn't kinda tangled. You kinda just loosely hold this end. But now you're going to pull this tail and watch this loop shrink on itself. Just gonna kinda pull, see how it kinda shrinks. And I want to pull, I don't want to stop right when it goes underneath. I actually want to pull it a little bit more so that it slips into about here. That way, when I cut this thing at the end, can't just slip right back out and it would start to unravel. So you want to make sure it's in there good. And you'll notice this tail really shrinks in. So that's how, you know, it's kinda really inside here. Then I usually just tug on both ends, make sure it's super tight and snip both sides. There you have it. There is our cool modern tassel. So now you can see how you just use straighten it back out and it's not a big deal. Okay, so now we have our exposed cords. In the next video, we'll talk about how to finish these things and make them for nice, fluffy. 7. Brushing Out: There's actually several different ways of finishing your tassel. So first and foremost, the easiest way is to actually do nothing to leave it exposed cord, even to leave the ends. That staggered look that you chop the whole thing off at the same length. But to actually leave it like that, it kinda adds a little bit more texture at the bottom of your piece. So that's an option for you. Another option is to actually unravel half of your chord so you can mix that up. You could do two or four unraveled or whatever, however you wanna do it. But yeah, you could mix that up. You could do half and half. So that's an option if you wanted to just get a little bit of both an add in some texture. So that's, again, that's an option for you. Another option is to unravel the entire, all of your chords. So the entire thing, and it creates a really nice textured look that I really like, sort of a crampy, I don't know, reminds me of crimping hair. So that's an option if you really liked that look, it creates a really wonderful texture and your piece, you could do that. So another kind of more obvious option is to, to unravel the whole thing and to brush it out to create more hair-like effect. So when you do this, it, I'll show you in a minute. But you'll want to probably chop it out one length. You won't be able to leave it kind of like a staggered look at the bottom. And I'll show you why in just a minute. So I'm going to show you how to make these two looks. One thing I didn't mention is you can actually do a combination of all of these and have a really kinda dynamic super textured piece. So yeah, there's a lot of options with this. You can you can make it your own. So whatever speaks to you, Go for it. I honestly haven't officially decided. I actually, as I was starting to unravel and brush out, I initially was planning to do this, but I really liked, I don't know, I liked the texture that it brought. So i'm, I'm considering doing a mixture, so we'll see I'm not really sure yet, but I'm going to set those aside and I'm going to show you how to get that kind of clumpy look. When you unravel your cord, as you can see, my chord is kinda going in this direction, so I'm gonna go in the opposite direction and kinda twist it near the top right here. And once it starts to separate, you can get your fingers in there and just pull apart. And you'll notice it'll bounce on itself like, like this. You just want to let it do its thing to kinda Unbounce like that. That's a better example. And you wanna make sure that they're apart because if they kinda bounce together, then they'll get intertwined again and kinda get twisted and tangled. So again, you just kinda unravel, insert your fingers, separate them out, let it bounce away from itself to do its thing. There we go. So again, if this feels like way, that's just too much, too many steps. If it feels too involved, then again, you can just leave it exposed cord just as is and not do anything and keep it super simple. So that is totally an option for you. Okay. I just have two more to go. There. You have it. Okay. So now if you wanted to take it a step further and get to that fluffy phase and take your brush. And if you notice, I've just kept this in the entire thing, but you'll want to brush on, I'm using my self-healing mat. Obviously, you don't want to do it on, I don't know, like a rug or even your tabletop. You don't want to scratch it. So I'm doing it all my self-healing mat. And you're just rushing and I have a little bit of chord here still left at the top. Okay? It will not at the bottom. That's kind of normal way it works. I apologize if this is really a noxious house. I'm sure it's super loud. On the video. Again, I'm getting these little nuts that just kinda happens. And if it becomes a problem, that can be cut off at the end. Another thing you can do is just kinda pull it apart like this. If you see a naught forming, just try to kind of undo it. I have a little bit of my chord left here. I'm going to undo that and keep brushing. Okay, so you can see why you would want to, why you would want to cut it at all the same length because it has kinda, kinda ugly at the bottom. This I think is kinda pretty having a staggered look when it's like this. But when it's brushed out, it doesn't look quite as being staggered. So that's why you'd want to cut that. And I would use my guide over here to know how short and we'll cut it. But let me just show you if you were to cut it. Let's just say let's just say I cut it here. It looks significantly better being just straight across. Okay, So if you'll notice a kind of have like a crampy memory kinda similar to this. You can still see those lines. It's not as like fluffy as you might want it. And one thing you can do is actually take a flat iron and straighten it out. 8. Smoothing: One thing I forgot to mention is if you're kind of on the fence about how you want to finish it and makes sure that you don't overdo it because obviously you can't go from this back to this. You can only go forward. So if you like I said, if you're just on offense, you don't know if you'd like to stick to the chord or do this or do this, I would stick to the court and slowly maybe do a little bit of this and each size or something like that, just to kinda, kinda fill it out and see how you want to finish it. So like I said, you can't do undo, so okay, so now I'm going to straighten this thing out. I'll show you how to do that. Do that. And until it starts to look the way you want it to. And it kinda curls around, which I'm okay with. As you can see. And you might want to even brush it out again after you straighten it and just kinda see how you like it if it's the right fluffiness. Some of the some of it comes out of the bottom. Alright, I will see with that, Am I do it one more time? I want to be careful not to like, I don't know if I can melt my mat or not. We're just gonna be careful. That's a little more fluffy. It's a little more what I was kinda going for a little bit. And after you brush it, you might have to like control and more time. In theory, you would trim it at the very end to kinda jumped the gun on that. But there you go. So it's a little more fluffy as you can see, it's a little more smooth, not so much of that grumpy kinda memory. So yeah, if you have a flat iron is super helpful in these kinda all the fiber arts projects that have done. I've noticed, yeah, if you have any sort of weirdness with your yarn or whatever, a flat iron kinda works wonders. So, um, so, yeah, I'm excited guys are excited to see what decisions you make with finishing these tassels off and how your pieces coming together. So this time I'm using my iron and I just wanted to see how it might work. I have it on a pretty hot setting. It's on the cotton setting. And I'm actually going to use some steam here. I think it looks pretty good. So I'm gonna do that on the other side a little bit. Okay. To do it, I'd recommend brushing it out. Again. Sorry if I'm like kinda in the way here. Hot iron. Right? And I'm sorry against that noise. Like a cigar. Not fun noise to here, but as you can see, it works really great. So I actually really like that. I think that looks really good. So yeah, two different options for you. If you have an iron and you don't have a flat iron, That's a way to go. Um, so yeah, There you have it and it will twist on itself. I'm I'm okay with that. You can kinda brush it back out. I think it's mostly because it's hot and it's kinda curling back up. So you can let it kinda cool while it's laying there instead of picking it up like I just did. I think that'll kinda help avoid more of that curling if that's not the look you're going for. So anyway, again, I'm really excited to see your projects guys. 9. Arranging: We're finally to the exciting part where we get to lay this all out and see how it's going to look before it gets on a rod. So I have sorted these according to their ends. If you ended up just doing, Let's say you chose the brush Outlook, then you can actually sort them just based on their length of gathering nut. So you can have a long pile and a short pile. And you'll see why that's maybe important or helpful in a minute. But as you can see, I have my chord pile here, my cord and unraveled cord pile. This is all unraveled cord and then this is my fluffy pile, or I've brushed out my chord. So now that I've done this and I've sorted everything, I'm going to push this all aside and I'm going to work on one type at a time. So like I said, if you have, let's say you're just doing fluffy, then you're going to want to do this with your tassel. So I'm going to sort them based on if they're short or long. So these are my longer ones. These are my shorter ones. So there we go. I'm going to push my short ones aside and I'm going to start just with my long. So right now we're just we're trying to lay it out and get the ones that are similar. Like, for instance, this is the same color, I don't want it next to it. I want it maybe over here. So we're just kinda like shuffling the deck. Basically, I'm going to put kind of evenly distributing these. Now, this because I have long-long and then a short, I might actually put maybe the short and the middle to kind of break up those long ones. And then there we go. Maybe put the pink over here, great over there. So as you can see, it's kinda evenly distributed. Everything feels it feels pretty good. And if I did anything, I might like swapped this over there or something like that. But the nice thing is once you bring in some of the other things are the other types of tassels, then it'll kinda even things out. Okay, now I want to work on the chord. So just my my ********* with the exposed cord. So this time, I'm still going to separate out the long gathering nuts from the short ones. I'm going to set aside the long ones this time and I'm going to just work on the shorts. So I'm gonna put a brown kind of in the middle. Since I have brown, brown. And it looks like it could use a pink over here. Oops, kinda getting crazy. Okay, then let's do another gray over here. And it could use another brown over here. Okay, so now I'm going to work on unraveled cord. So again, I'm going to separate out long and short. These are my lungs. It's hard to tell actually some of these which one's short and long. You might not be able to see all this and I apologize for that. But okay, so there's a real short tassels. Okay, so now let's see, I could use a gray here. Let's add a little pink there. So as you can see, there's like a bald spot in a couple of these places. So that means that I have too many shorts next to each other. You can see these are the shorter ones. So I need to mix these up. So what I'm gonna do is actually traded out, maybe find another gray since the colors look pretty distributed. I'll look for a different gray and then swap that out. So like for instance, like right there, and these two are next to each other. So maybe I should actually swap it with a different one. So let's say I swap it with the sky. Then I'd say, Oh, there's too many fluffy ones next to each other. Let's flop that out again. So it's kinda just playing around and clearing up, like I said, those little bald spots, making sure that these fuel the colors feel like there's no there's not a clear pattern where it's like gray, pink, brown, gray, pink or whatever. It's it's there's really no clear pattern up here with the color. So that's what I want. I want it to feel kind of just random up there, but down here I want this feels good. This feels like there's a nice combination of textures and lengths. And here's a couple of spots where it could use, it could use some swapping out. So it's just kind of playing with that. So keep, keep messing with it until it feels right. And then we'll get it on the right. 10. Final Steps: All right guys. So once everything is laid out, you are ready to get it on the rod. So as you can see, I've already started, I put a few on here, but it's pretty self-explanatory. You're going to start from one end and work your way down. So I'm starting on this side. You just take your tassel and slip it on one loop at a time. And then just slide it on down. And that's the beauty of when we set up our tassels. Makes sure that, making sure that these loops, we're nice and neat so that it could sit really pretty on this rod. So it paid off, taking that little second to set it up just right. And one thing I wanted to mention is, let's just pretend you made this cool thing and then you decide that you want to move it to a different room and you wish you had made it bigger, like made it longer, or maybe made it taller and had a double stacked or something. Or say you wish you had a different color that you had added in. The beauty of this is it's so easy to take off and put back on. It would be very simple to slip in a new color on a longer rod. And just like add to this, that would be super simple. Another option would be if you cut your rod in half and made it double height. So you had two rows of tassels that could look kinda cool too. So yeah, there's options with this and you definitely could change it up down the road if you ever wanted to, you wouldn't have to scrap the whole thing and start over. You can just reuse what you have, then add to it. So you could also, if, let's say you did all this and you're like, man, I wish I brushed out this whole thing. You could still brush it all out and make it all fluffy on the ends. So yeah, the cool thing is, you can't go back, you can't make it chord once it's been fluffed out, but you can totally take it to that fluffy stage if you ever wanted to. This is the beauty of using a towel instead of, um, instead of a tree branch. Is that it? That's why I suggested the dowel normally for fiber arts projects, I like to use a stick or a branch from outside. And with this project because it slip sign, so tight, you really do need to have a smooth dowel rod to work with. 11. Farewell: I love making this class for you. I hope you enjoyed it too, and I am so excited to see your projects, so please post pictures of those projects. I am dying to see what you guys are made and what you've been up to. And I know that other students would love the inspiration as well. If you enjoyed this class and you want to see more for me, click that file, then you'll be in the know each and every time it in classes made available and hopefully there'll be live life more. So until next time. Please post pictures or your projects. I literally dying to see what you mean. Maybe not literally an incredible thing to see, you know, rope and yarn transformed into a matter of hours or days depending on how quickly you work to create something beautiful for your walls. So I'm really excited for you to take this project or class and your project. So let's get started.