Crafting with Yarn

A chic way to dress up an old vase is to use a chunky and variegated yarn to recover something old and make it new again.

Remember in grade school, when we’d make those hollowed out Easter eggs with crochet thread? The same concept applies in this case…but with small balloons and glue/water mixture. Wrap the balloon with your wet yarn strands. Wait until the yarn dries. Then, just pop your balloon. These would be darling hanging from the ceiling at a party alone or even with battery-operated tealights in them. It’s like the popular “Martha” tissue paper balls hanging down, but with a unique twist.

This is an example of a technique called “couching.” It starts with two items of fiber arts- yarn and embroidery thread here for example and you are basically “tacking” down the secondary yarn in a design pattern. It allows for beautiful curves in a design. Designs can be hand-drawn and then “couched”, however on this particular project, I purchased an already store-bought pillow that was on clearance and used the design already in the pillow to “guide” my couching. It adds interest and texture to the pillow. This was all done by hand.

Once again, I’m “couching” on this next project. I took a linen wristlet and couched my initial on the back of it. This time however I couched by using my sewing machine over top of the yarn. It’s a much faster process. Some prefer hand, some prefer machine. It all depends on the look you are going for. I added a fabric ruffle to one side and trimmed with yarn on the other. I also added some pink yarn flower for a fresh burst of color.