Making it: Plant hangers and Lynn Hunter

I want to share some simple fiber projects to get people creating, while also sharing the artwork of my talented textile artist friends. This week's project is a plant hanger inspired by NYC based artist Lynn Hunter. She is not just an amazing human being, but also makes work that makes a bit of chaos seem quite alluring.

Her amorphous, free formed style on plant hangers are a reminder that it's more than OK for things to be a little off, and these embraced imperfections make for quite enjoyable displays of nature's green friends. Also, her freestyled crochet rugs are the bomb, and if you want to learn how to make them like her, and you're in NYC, you are in luck! She teaches at Textile Arts Center! And has a class later this month on rag rug crochet! And one on macrame and knotting!

Now that you've got some rich inspiration, grab 3 pieces of rope, or thick bunches of yarn, or wires, or torn fabric, whatever weight-bearing materials will make up the body of your plant hanger (we'll call these our "main strands"). You'll need scissors and a potted plant, with plate to catch drips, trust me. You'll also want some sort of string/yarn to tie together the main strands of the plant hanger. These can be matching, contrasting, saran wrap, whatever will successfully hold together these main strands. These measurements are for a 6-8" pot, with wrapped joins instead of knotted (if you'd rather use a knotting technique in place of the wrapped areas, add about 3-5 inches per strand / per knot, depending on thickness of materials. then grab a book on macrame!)

first step: loop at top, wrap with string about three inches below fold to create hanging loop. you can then wrap this loop with yarn for a fun look, or just leave it unwrapped to keep the main strand material exposed.

I did a little twisted rope on the strands, making three ropes from the 6 pieces, you can just leave them be if its already rope or yarn. then create a join on each of these three ropes about 18" down from top. the join can be big, small, long, short, whatever as long as it is strong.

when you have all three joins, seperate these strands and join alternate strands about 6" below first join.

now try the pot on! slip it in and grab the bottom to see where the knot on the bottom should be. then knot (or just wrap tightly, if the cords are too thick to knot) in this case I chose to attach a bunch more funky strands to get a nice big tassel at the bottom. i just slipped them over the top of the knot to hang down on either side, then wrap it all together to cover the knot at the bottom

this is how i started the wrap, looping it around so it can be super secure but not leave too much bulk at the top. I then let the ends of this wrap dangle down and become part of the tassel, trimming the pieces until i found contentment. :)

#DIY #project #LynnHunter #planthanger