Threading yarn into art—design your own wall hanging or use our ready-made pattern
This delicately beautiful wall hanging adds color and softness to your décor. Its intriguing surface is created by threading embroidery floss through the fabric. Create your own pattern or follow the example.
Pattern design: Hanna Anonen.
Size: 31 × 42 cm.
Threaded wall hanging—supplies:
- glossy DMC Mouline embroidery floss: in the pictured wall hanging, green (S367), yellow (S307), light blue (S800), copper (S976), silver (E168), mint (S504), and black (S310) were used
- loosely woven backing fabric
- sewing needle and sewing machine
- two wooden dowels (18 mm diameter) and a saw
“The idea for this project came to me while I was exploring old Finnish ryijy rugs and new graphic design. I wondered if it would be possible to bring these together—to merge the textile’s texture and three-dimensional feel with a modern, graphic wall piece. Threading yarn through fabric is an easy way to create decorative textiles. It’s fun to see how the yarn becomes a larger field of color. Up close, it looks like someone has been coloring with a dotted-line pen. This type of threading is also a nice concentration exercise in the midst of everyday hustle—almost like meditating.” – designer Hanna Anonen
Threaded wall hanging—instructions:
- Cut a 31 × 62 cm piece of fabric (this will leave a 10 cm allowance at the top and bottom).
- Thread the shapes according to the attached pattern. Pass the colored yarn over and under the fabric in alternating rows. For the next row, reverse the sequence so it’s the opposite of the previous row.
- Leave a long tail of yarn at both ends of each row so you can trim the resulting fringe neatly to an even length.
- After you have tidied the fringes, sew casings at the top and bottom of the fabric for the wooden dowels. Make the casings roomy enough so the dowels slide in comfortably.
- Cut the dowels to equal lengths so that they extend about 2 cm beyond the casings. Hammer two nails into the wall at the same height, spaced to match the width of the fabric. Hang the wall hanging.
Tips!
- If you like, you can create your own version of the wall hanging. You’ll need a few different colors of yarn that go well together. Play with similar shades or contrasting hues. In the pictured example, the aim was a light and airy effect, so yellow, light blue, and two shades of green were chosen first. To enhance the light blue, a coppery orange—blue’s complementary color—was added.
- Sketch a layout of your shapes on paper. They can vary in direction and form. To help plan your composition, you can cut pieces of colored paper and arrange them on the fabric. Consider combining larger and smaller shapes for contrast. Also consider rhythm: how far apart are the colored areas? Will you keep them evenly spaced or add variation?
Download files
Threaded wall hanging, pattern(PDF)
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