Mint Wall Weaving

“A creative life is an amplified life.” -Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a whole book on how much a life full of creativity is a joyous and purposeful life. That is why we here at The Mint Sweater make creativity a priority. We are constantly looking for new ways to express our creative sides and furthermore encourage our Mint Sweater Girls to embrace their own creativity.

Our latest creative project here at The Mint Sweater Studios was creating this completely swoon worthy wall weaving. We absolutely love weavings, but couldn’t find any that were completely our style, mint of course! So we decided to create one ourselves.

Today we are going to show you how we created our very own Mint Sweater inspired wall weaving.

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First, the Materials:

-Yarn (of different colors and textures, how many varies on preference)

-Twine

-Loom

-Lace

-A Dowel

-Scissors

-Tapestry Needle

We used 7 different yarns from Michaels and Hobby Lobby and one kind of lace. Changing up the different kinds of yarn you use, not just the color, adds texture and dimension to the overall look of your weaving.

The first step is to thread your loom with the twine. Next, take your first color of yarn and start weaving. We started at the top and worked our way to the bottom. Also, we always start with a simple over and under pattern to set the yarn in place and create a simple anchor.

Once you’ve woven your first color of yarn, we recommend at least 3-5 rows or more, you can begin switching colors. We like to change up the different pattern of weaving every few rows.

There are multiple patterns you can use to add variation to your weaving. Simple patterns like over and under can even be varied by skipping extra strings.

Other types of weaving techniques are:

Hem Stitch

Soumak Weave

Back Stitch

For weaving techniques and patterns, online videos and articles are a great way to learn how to perfect your weaving skills.

As you can see, throughout the weave we varied our color of yarn, weaving technique, and added even a touch of lace every few rows.

If you’re wondering what to do with the yarn at the end of your rows, don’t worry we will show you how to tie those off after you’ve finished weaving.

As you get to the bottom of your weaving, make sure to leave a couple inches of space to add tassels.

Once you’ve woven your last row, you are ready to add your tassels. For the tassels, we use a simple technique. We took the yarn and wrapped it around our arm from hand to elbow like you would wind up a cord. Cut the bundle of yarn in half so you have one bundle of really long strings.

We then placed the bundle underneath the first set of strings, pulled the center of the bundle up through the center of two strings creating a loop. Take the two ends of the bundle of strings and pull them up towards the weaving to then pull them down through the loop you created.

With your two fingers pull the knot, tightening it, up towards the weaving and in your other hand hold the strings down it the opposite direction. For a more a detailed tutorial on creating fringe for your weaving we recommend watching online video tutorials.

Once you’ve created a row of fringe you can either leave it at that or we wanted to create a two colored layered fringe so we went ahead and added a second row of white colored tassels underneath the mint.

Once we finished weaving and adding our tassels, fringe, we were now ready to tie off the weaving and remove it from the loom.

Once we tied up the ends of the weaving strings to keep it in place, we removed the weaving from the loom and began taking the extra yarn at the ends of the rows and weaving them into the back of the weaving to secure them in place, trim off excess yarn.

Once our rows were secured in back we were all finished with our weaving and ready to attach it to a dowel to hang on the wall.

Using twine and a simple tapestry needle, found at Michaels or any craft store, we sewed the dowel to the weaving to secure it in place.

Finally, we are ready to hang our weaving on the wall.

Once you’ve hung your weaving, it is time to trim the tassel to the shape and length you want. We took a pair of sharp fabric scissors and trimmed the tassels. We started with the white tassels and trimmed them evenly across. Next, we trimmed the mint tassels into an upside down triangle shape to give the weaving a unique style.

This our final piece. We are completely in love with the colors, texture, and feel of this weaving. This weave could not represent The Mint Sweater style better.

Thanks for joining us in The Mint Sweater studio, weaving is now one of our favorite projects. Once you’ve learned the different weaving technique patterns and how to finish off the weaving, it becomes a pretty simple and fun project to do more often.

We’d love to see your latest projects, tags us on Instagram at @themintsweater using the hashtag #mintsweatergirl