Yarn Cloud and Rainbow Wall Hanging

Sometimes when I’m in the middle of a bunch of complicated projects, I just need to do something simple that I can do in one sitting (or close to it). On a 75 degree day here, I decided I needed to do something that said SPRING, and nothing says spring to me more than rainbows.

I came across this project online at The Colorventurer and fell in love. I had everything I needed on hand, so it was easy to get started.

Supplies:

• Cardboard
• Yarn
• Scissors/craft knife

Of course I decided to do this project on the day that our recycling was picked up, so I had to think a little harder about what to use for cardboard. We happened to have a pizza box waiting to go in the trash that had a mostly clean lid, so I used that.

I love the colors in the original project, but I wanted more traditional rainbow colors for mine. I happened to have bought 7 colors (ROYGBIV, anyone?) for another project, so I used those.

The first thing I did was cut out the cloud. I drew a cloud shape on the cardboard (avoiding the pizza stain), and once I was happy with that, I drew the same shape roughly an inch inside the first one. I used some heavy-duty scissors to cut out the outside of the cloud, and then I used my craft knife to cut the inside. You could certainly use scissors for the whole thing. 

My white yarn skein was pretty big, so I didn’t want to mess with passing it through the cloud over and over to wrap it. Instead, I cut off a long piece of yarn and worked with it that way. I ended up only having to cut off three pieces, but it really doesn’t matter. If you tie your knots on the back of the cloud, you won’t ever know where one piece of yarn ends and the next begins.

Once I had the cloud covered in white, I started tying on the colors. As I was cutting the colored strands, I was aiming for them to be about twice as long as the cloud was tall. The actual strands I cut were about twice that long. I stretched out one strand of the first color, and then just kept going back and forth until I had 15 strands. Once everything was laid out, I cut the loops I’d formed so I had 15 long, straight strands of yarn.

Because I wasn’t sure how wide each color was going to be, I wasn’t sure where to start each color. Since I had 7 colors, I started in the middle. I folded one group of strands in half and then draped them over the cloud, pulling the bottom of the strands through the loop I formed. Once I pulled them tight, I had a knot. After the first color, I added colors to each side until I had the whole rainbow.

I used scissors to trim the bottom into a roughly straight line. Straight-ish? Close enough. This yarn is curly enough that it kind of does what it wants.

The final touch was adding a little hanger. I was originally planning to use a piece of white yarn, but I happened to see a spool of fishing line sitting on my desk and opted for that instead. I hung the cloud on my finger to see where it balanced so that it hung straight, and then I tied on the fishing line accordingly.

My rainbow is hanging in my kitchen, but this would be so cute hanging on a door. Anywhere, really. I don’t know that there’s a bad place for a rainbow.

I actually have the rope and yarn for a bigger wall hanging, and this has me excited to get going on that. You can’t have too many rainbows, can you?