It’s been almost 18 months since we moved into our new apartment, but the walls are still pretty bare. This project is part of my effort to remedy that.
Essentially it’s three doilies, beaded and done in rainbow-coloured thread instead of white, that have been stiffened, strung together and hung on the wall.
I used a larger thread and hook than the pattern called for, but because I did only a portion of the pattern the end result is still quite small. The middle doily is about four inches across, and all three together are about 11 inches across. It works well on the narrow section of wall I have it on, but I have plans to do a much bigger one in future and see how that turns out.
There are so many options for customizing this — you could do any combination of thread colour and beads to suit your home’s decor.
You’ll need…
- Size 10 crochet thread — I used Aunt Lydia’s brand in rainbow
- 2mm crochet hook
- Beads of your choice
- White glue
- Water
- Jar with a lid
- Jump rings (typically used for jewellery making)
- Blocking board OR a sheet of Styrofoam
- Red Heart Affinity Doily pattern
Getting started…
For the two smaller doilies, follow the Affinity Doily pattern through to round five, adding beads evenly into the second round using a slip stitch. (If you’re not familiar with adding beads into crochet work, there’s a good tutorial here.) Fasten off and weave in your two ends.
For the larger piece, follow the pattern through to round eight, adding beads evenly into the second round, and again in round seven. Fasten off and weave in your two ends.
The next step is stiffening the doilies so they hang nice and flat. I followed this Craftsy tutorial on stiffening with white glue. Using the measurements given I ended up with way too much for this little project, so you may want to use just one tablespoon of glue and two tablespoons of water if you don’t want leftovers.
Use a spoon to spread the glue mixture over each doily, trying to avoid the beads. Blot any excess glue mixture away with a paper towel, and then wipe off any of the mixture that’s found its way onto the beads.
Now the important part: pin each doily to your blocking board or piece of Styrofoam (I used the latter), making sure each doily is pinned in the exact shape you want the end product to look like. Leave them overnight to dry.
Once your doilies are dry, unpin them from your blocking board and attach together them using the jump rings — see photo below — making sure the rings are evenly placed on either side of the large middle doily.
That’s all there is to it. To hang, I attached another jump ring on each side of the finished product, and then used those to hang it onto some little 3M hooks — see first photo.
Like I said, there’s so many options for customizing this, and I’m looking forward to playing around with different sizes, colours and beads.
The Crafty Feminist 