Yarn Fringe Pillow DIY
If you've been swept up by the weaving craze that's taken over the Internet the past few years, then you are not alone. If you are also one of those people that has really good intentions of doing your own weaving, but know it's probably never going to happen due to skill level/time commitment/fill-in-any-other-excuse-here, then I've got something I think you'll be into. Last year I did a project that I like to call "a cheater's tapestry weaving" and made a
large wall hanging for the office. I was so surprised at how easy it was and how quickly something that large could be made, so when I recently saw a pillow that incorporated hanging yarn into the design, I thought it would be fun to try the same "cheater weaving" technique on a pillow as well. Turns out, it
is fun, really easy, and goes even faster on a pillow than a rug. So it's the perfect Saturday afternoon project.
Supplies: -loose weave woven pillow (I used
this one)*
-thick yarn in various colors
-small crochet hook
-fabric scissors
*When finding a pillow to use, look for a weave that's loose enough to get a small crochet hook through. Something that has a textured burlap type of weave and look is probably your best bet.
First, plan out how you want your finished pillow to look (make a sketch if that helps). Plan out your color chunks and what angles you want to cut into the yarn at the end. Cut your yarn pieces double the length you want them to hang (with a little extra for safety). If you aren't sure what angles you want to cut into your yarn, just make them all extra long and decide after you've attached your yarn lines.
To weave into the pillow, push your hook away from you and up through a horizontal pillow thread. Loop the middle of your yarn string around the hook as shown above.
Pull your hook back through the horizontal pillow thread towards you about 1", or so you have a 1" loop. Place the tails of your yarn down through the loop and pull to tighten the knot. That's it!
Just keep doing that motion across the pillow as far as you want to go and switch yarn colors as needed. Overlap colors by doing another color of yarn directly above a previous color, but just a few rows higher on the pillow.
When you're done with your blocks of color, use your scissors to trim off the ends of the yarn to create either a straight line or an angled line. If you do an angled line, I like to cut the first and last string to the right height, then cut the middle string to be a length between those two, and then keep cutting each strand longer or shorter from the middle outwards.
The nice thing about this DIY (other than how fast it is) is that if you make a mistake or continue your line too far, you can simply pull out the yarn and no harm is done. I decided at the end of mine to add a few black pieces in the middle of the white, and it was really easy to undo those white knots and replace them with a different color.
I think the new colored woven fringe give the pillow such a playful vibe compared to what it looked like before. If you have more than one pillow to do, you could repeat the same pattern, do a different one all together, or reverse the pattern so they mirror each other when placed on the same couch or bed. It may look like the fringe is fussy, but if the strands do get a bit out of place after use, just give them a quick comb with your fingers in a downward direction and all is well again. I'm all for quick and easy ways to spruce up a pillow and add some personality to a cozy chair or couch, so I think this project is a win all around! xo. Laura
Credits // Author and Photography: Laura Gummerman. Photos edited with Stella from the Signature Collection.
