Oct 19, 2016

Making A Spooky Yarn Garland

Hey there!

Just so you know, not all crafts go as planned. Sometimes you read the directions and it doesn't work out quite like it should.

And then you try to salvage as much of the project as you can.

I wanted to make a spooky yarn garland. Ghosts, spiders and pumpkins -- you can't go wrong there! And it's yarn. Yarn is easy.

Well, kind of.

So, instead of explaining where I went wrong or where the directions went wrong, I'm going to show you nice people what I did to salvage my spooky yarn garland project.

First things first - you are going to need yarn. Not a ton of it, unless you are making a very long garland. One skein of each color should do it. White, black and orange. I used basic yarn that I got from Joann's Craft Store (Red Heart Super Saver).

You also need some black and green pipe cleaners. The black pipe cleaners will be cut in half and the green pipe cleaners will be cut in thirds.

I also picked up some googley/wiggly eyes for that special touch.

The tools that you will need are a ruler, scissors, wire cutters, a sturdy piece of cardboard that is at least 6 " long and a pen or pencil. I also used glue. My glue of choice for this project is Aleene's tacky glue. It dries clear and holds on to fabric and yarn like a beast! Any fabric glue should work but Aleene's isn't expensive so if you can find it, I'd suggest using it.

Let's begin with the ghosts, shall we? My little ghosties measure in at about 6" each, so my yarn pieces need to be 12" total (before the fold). Each ghost uses about 75 strings of yarn. To accomplish this, I ...

Cut out a piece of sturdy cardboard 6" across to use as my base.

I then wrapped my white yarn around the cardboard 75 times (complete loops equals 1 time).
I secured the top of the yarn loops with a spare piece of yarn and knotted the top to make a hanging loop.
I then added a 14" piece of yarn about 1 " from the top to make the head of the ghost.
Then I added googley eyes.

The spider and pumpkins are similar in that I wrapped yarn around 3 of my fingers. I wrapped until I had a ball in a size that I liked.

For the spider, I had already cut 2 pipe cleaners in half (with either very strong scissors or wire cutters -- I used wire cutters), so I slid the 4 halves through my fingers. It works better if you have the pipe cleaners in your hand BEFORE you begin wrapping the black yarn around your hand but I made a mistake the first time around and sliding them in after is okay too.

Take a spare piece of black yarn (about 10" in length -- you can cut it later if you'd like) and feed it through your fingers so that you can capture all the yarn. Tie the yarn tightly (but carefully) into a knot. Then you can slide your fingers out. The 10" spare yarn will be the hanging loop.
Cut the yarn on either side and shape it into a ball.
Bend your piper cleaner into legs.

To create the pumpkins you do the same thing but you delete the cutting.

Because you don't make the pumpkin into a pom pom (you can if you'd like) I decided to use 4 fingers and count the rotations around my fingers. I decided 100 was a good number for my pumpkins but 75 worked as well.
Tide the spare piece of yarn into a hanging loop and then gently slide the orange yarn from your fingers. The more gently you slide them off your fingers, the more your pumpkin will keep the pumpkin shape.
I twisted the black pipe cleaner twice, added a green pipe cleaner and continued to twist the black pipe cleaner around the green one, securing the green one in place. I hooked the black one back towards the pumpkin and then used an ink pin to create curls for the pumpkin vines.

Once all of your spookies have been created, string them on a piece of twine, cord or ribbon. And now you have a spooky yarn garland for your house!

In a matter of full disclosure, the ghosts were the easiest things I made. The pumpkins were next and the spiders... well you don't see a lot of them, do you? This was one of those crafts that looks really easy but didn't turn out that way for me. I thought about quitting but I wanted to show all my folks that even if it doesn't turn out the way you thought it would, it can still be a cute project. I am still proud to hang my garland in my home.