While I was furloughed, I had plenty of time on my hands and multiple projects I wanted to do. At the beginning of quarantine, my husband and I painted our study and there was this big wall that needed something special. It was the first thing you would see when you came into my house and I wanted it to be a stand out piece.
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Pinterest had given me plenty of ideas and I wanted to incorporate the mountains into the piece. Living in South Texas, we are as far from mountains as possible and so they are my favorite landscape.
What you’ll need
- dowel pole 2″ thick
- stain (optional)
- 2 spools of macrame yarn (I purchased this one)
- fabric dye (I bought this and this)
- masking tape
- scissors
- table saw (optional)
Cutting and Staining the Dowel pole
The down pole we bough was 8′ long and the artwork I was planning on making was going to 6′ so I cut the extra 2′ off with the table saw.
If you don’t have a table saw, or don’t want to do any cutting, then you can purchase a dowel pole closer to the length you want. Or you can have the people at Lowes or Home Depot cut it to length for you.
Then I stained the pole with 2 coats of a dark walnut satin stain and sealer.
Tying the Yarn to the Pole
You are going to start with a Lark’s Head Knot
I cut yarn the length of my couch as a measurement to knot to the dowel pole. I wanted the yarn to be 4′ long once knotted, so the cut pieces needed to be about 8′ long.
It took about 2 days to get this done (I took a lot of break and we needed to use the couch for other things).
Mapping out the Mountains
Once the yarn was attached to the pole, I trimmed it so it was relatively even at the bottom.
Then I used masking tape to map out the mountain shapes and levels I wanted on the piece. I wasn’t completely sure this was going to work, but it ended up being way better than I thought.
I laid out trash bags under the area where I was going to be working to not dye the carpet blue.
Dying the Yarn
This is definitely what took the longest. In my head, I thought I would be able to make a large batch of dye and drop all of the yarn into it at the specific heights to match the mountains. It turns out, yarn is relatively large. I had to make way more dye that I had planned and I had to dye much smaller sections.
So it took a section of the lower mountain range and placed it into the prepared dye (prepare the dye as per the packaging). I set a timer for 30 minutes and moved on to the next section. The lower level of mountains took about 4 sections of dye.
After the timer went off, I took the section out and put it in clean water for 15 minutes to rinse it out. After the 15 minutes was up, I drained the water and put the yarn back in the container to keep it from getting water everywhere.
Then for the 2nd layer of mountains, I followed the same process, but when making the dye I doubled the amount of water. I wanted to create the gradient look so watering down the dye achieved that look for me.
For the last layer, I had painted the final mountains. I did this for two reasons:
- There was too much yarn to gradient dye in containers, it would have been a waste of water and dye
- I was afraid that dying it would make the final layer too dark and I wanted to control the color
So I took a sponge brush and dye with nearly triple the amount of water and began painting at the top right below the tape. I wanted to create a crisp line at the top of the mountains. Then I filled in the dye down to the 2nd level of mountains. I did this on top of a cut up cardboard box to prevent dye from getting on the floor and I could fully saturate the yarn.
Let it dry & hang
I hung the final piece to air dry for a few days before doing any touch ups.
After it was dry, I planned out where I wanted it on the wall with a stud finder and tape measure. Then I used large curtain rod hooks to hang the dowel on the wall. And here is the final product!
Check this out on my saved instagram stories!
