Tunisian Crochet Wall Hanging ~ Fun with Fiber ~ New Year 2016 ~ New Artwork

Happy New Year everyone!

I just finished a new piece that I cannot wait to share with you!

It is my new wall hanging I made for my home.

This was a really FUN project that I enjoyed from start to finish.

I had no idea what I was creating when I started.

I just knew that I wanted to make a colorful, large piece for highly visible wall in my home.

I wanted it to have a rich feel and a thick fabric with a heavy fringe at the bottom.

Tunisian Crochet is a fun and easy technique that I learned in 2012.  It creates a thick wonderful fabric that looks like it has been knitted.

My favorite stitch is the Tunisian Simple Stitch (TSS).

Here are 2 blog posts that I found that have good tutorials on how to begin...

http://crochetingthedayaway.blogspot.com/2011/10/tunisian-crochet-how-to-basic-tunisian.html

http://thingsbright.com/welcome-to-tunisian-crochet-week 

It is a very versatile stitch that I have also used to make several dolls, hats and neck gators over the years.

To make the fabric, I held two strands of yarn together.

I chose a worsted weight acrylic variegated yarn for the 1st strand that would be consistent through the whole piece.

The second strand of yarn changed throughout the whole piece as I used different wool and blended fiber yarns from my stash.  

I had no idea what it would look like when I started. 

I decided to make it in a series of panels so I could control how long and wide it would be without worrying about the weight & exact size of the piece as I worked on it.

It gave me a lot of flexibility with the end result & kept it very portable so I could work on it wherever I was!

Each panel is unique and has its own subtle color changes.

If I made this in one huge piece, the color changes would not have been as interesting because the flow would have been uniform from left to right instead of top to bottom.

When I finished all of the panels I lay them all out and turned them this way and that to find the color flow I liked across the piece.

It was an exciting process to see it come together from 5 individual pieces into one cohesive large tapestry.

Once they were placed in the order I liked, I turned them over wrong side up and sewed them together with my yarn needle & more long scraps of yarn from my stash.

Happily, another neat effect that happened by making them in panels is that the seams of each joined panel created a divided texture and drape that added a lot of character to the whole piece and prevented it from looking like a blanket hanging on the wall.

The next step was to crochet a border of burgundy around the whole piece.  I used a bulky weight yarn and I single crocheted 2 or 3 rows to get the size border I liked.

Then I cut lots of bulky and worsted weight fibers from my stash in the same color pallet to create the fringe.

An easy way to get them to be all the same size is to choose a book or piece of cardboard that is the length of the fringe you want to create.

Wind the fiber around the book over and over and cut across the fibers at the top of the backing you choose.

You will have a pile of fibers that are double the length of your fringe.

Grab as many fibers you want in each tassel and fold them half.

Place your crochet hook where want to place the tassel, put the group of yarn on the hook, bring the ends through the loop and adjust the tension you like for your knot. 

Repeat this process all the way across.  Because of the thickness of the fringe I wanted to create, I made each yarn bundle bulky and placed them in every other chain at the bottom of the border.  

When it was all done I added individual colors of worsted weight fibers randomly along the fringe line too to have color pops along the way.

For a visual explanation, check out this tutorial of a pom pom wall hanging that also has photos at the end of the post to show you what I described above.

Ta Da!

R-Chee was by my side through the whole project.

Can you see his little pug feet sticking out under the table? :)

The Wall Hanging is about 48 x 60 and weighs about 10 lbs.

The weight and size of the wall hanging could have made the installation challenging.

I did not want it to sag or stretch when I mounted it so my solution was to create an illusion of it hanging from delicate rings while actually providing structure along the top.

The wall hanging is hung on its own like a picture. 

I crocheted a sleeve across the top back portion and slid a long piece of wood in it to hang it from. Then I used two sawtooth hangers in the wood to hang the wall hanging on the wall.

The rings at the top are wood drapery rings that are floating above the actual piece. They are just turned flat instead of used as rings on a rod to hang a curtain. I actually took the hanging clips off the rings and just hung each one right up to the top edge of the piece.

Voila!

I just LOVE how it turned out!

What a FUN way to start 2016!

I cannot wait to see what else comes to life for all of us in the coming year.

Thank you so much for always playing with me and Archie!

You all make this journey a wonderful and exciting place to explore together!

xoxoxo

Melissa & Archie