Before I hopped on the plane to visit Seattle and Portland for work I made a darling monogram on canvas wall hanging. I thought it would be cool to embroider right onto the canvas.
Which led me to try my hand at weaving. It was actually fairly easy and enjoyable!
So here is what you will need:
- Canvas from an art/craft store
- Paint for your background design
- One skein of yarn
- Yarn Darners from a fabric/craft store
- Masking tape
- Pencil and Eraser
- Ruler
- Exacto Knife
- Hot Glue Gun
I started by first painting my canvas chevron. I've seen this on Pinterest a thousand time and thought it was a brilliant idea. But I'll warn you, it looks a lot easier on Pinterest than it is in real life!
I don't know what those people do, but it took two of us to figure out how to tape the canvas!
I first measured my canvas and figured out how many chevrons would go across once. My canvas was 20 inches long so I figured out I could get 4 full chevrons and 1 that was halved. So I was looking at 5 altogether which meant I needed to make each one 4 inches wide. I then gridded my canvas in 4" x 2" rectangles. At every 2" point on the 4" line I put a dash to show where the point needed to be.
I then taped from the bottom left corner to the 2" dash, then back to the bottom right corner and repeated. After each strip of tape I took an exacto knife and cut away the overlap so I would have clean straight lines.
And then you are ready to paint!
I am currently loving gray and yellow together so I chose to paint gray and white chevron and then use yellow yarn for my letter.
Once the paint was dry I flipped the canvas over and drew my letter backwards on the back.
Thread your darner/needle. Then start by satin stitching your letter onto the canvas following the outline of the letter. Put your needle through from the wrong side and pull the yarn through to the right side. Go straight across to the other side of your letter and pull your needle through again to the back.
Repeat until your letter is filled in. It should look like mine when you are done.
I would recommend using a yarn darker than the paint or painting the area of your letter first to prevent your background design from showing through your letter. Unfortunately I only came to that realization after I satin stitched my whole letter. Geesh!
And now you can start weaving!
Use your darner as a weaving tool and weave between the threads from one end of the letter to the other. After you pull the yarn through use the back of the darner to condense the weaving and make it tighter. Once you finished a row use your fingers to make it even tighter.
This part can take a little time, so sit back and catch up on a good show!
When you finish weaving your letter use hot glue to outline the woven letter with another strand of yarn to clean up the edges. And then you're done!
Now go hang it on your wall and admire it!
