Make your own macramé plant hanger

Want more plants, but have no room left on your shelves and windowsills? Do you love simple, original decorations that bring your home to life? Do you enjoy making little things for yourself or your loved ones? Then you will love macramé.

What is macramé?

Macramé, or decorative knotting, is an Arabic technique of knotting strings, cords and threads into original home decorations, such as plant hangers that look great with any houseplant. Do not worry, it is an easy technique: once you know the basic knots, you too can create beautiful and intricate patterns, which you can find all over the internet. You can follow the guide in this article, or explore Google and YouTube, where you will find countless tutorials and instructions.

What will you need?

In macramé, you tie knots without knitting needles or crochet hooks, and you can use it to make clothes, all kinds of accessories, wall and hanging decorations… practically anything you can think of: the only limit is your creativity.  

Supplies:

• Yarn or string
• Scissors
• A comb (to brush out the yarn, if the type of yarn allows it)

TIP: If you want to decorate your creation, you can use beads, for example, or a wooden ring on which you knot the macramé and from which you then hang the finished piece.

How it works

First, we need to decide how many arms the finished plant hanger should have (hangers are most often made with 3 or 4 arms), how we will hang it (on a ring or by a loop) and how long it should be.

As a general rule, each arm of the hanger needs 4 strings. So if we want a hanger with 4 arms, we need 16 strings in total; with 3 arms, 12.

When deciding how long the strings need to be, we can follow the general principle of cutting the strings twice as long as the finished hanger should be. So if we want the hanger to be about 100 cm long, we will need strings 200 cm long.

If we want to hang the hanger by a loop (or on a ring), we can avoid extra cutting by measuring the strings at double that length. We then fold the measured and cut strings in half, which doubles the number of strings, and at the same time make a loop, with a knot or another method, to hang it from.

In the following guide, we describe how to make a hanger with a loop, 3 arms and a finished length of about 100 cm.

INSTRUCTIONS

1) Cut 6 strings of the same length, 400 cm each (we will double the cut strings by folding them in half, so the resulting string length will be 200 cm, which is twice the desired finished hanger length of 100 cm)

2) Fold the cut strings in half (if we want to create a loop) or thread them through a wooden ring at the halfway point. We can then create the loop with a knot or by tying it off with a short piece of the string we are using: we show both in the pictures.

LOOP

3) Now divide the 12 strings into 3 groups of 4.

4) Tie a simple knot. The following pictures show the same type of knot, which you can use to create the two simplest patterns, called either “Spiral” (we keep repeating the knot on the same side) or “Meander” (where we alternate right and left knots). We always knot by wrapping two strings around the remaining two, as the picture shows.

SPIRAL

NOTE: The first picture shows how to tie the left knot. We will knot with the two outer strings (left and right) and wrap them around the two middle ones. Take the string on the left and form the shape of the letter “L” with it. Pass the right string over the left one, wrap it around the back and pull it around the two middle strings and out through the “L” loop of the left string. Carefully and evenly tighten the knot by pulling both strings (right and left) until it holds firmly. Repeat this over and over until the pattern is the length you want: you create the spiral by always tying the knot on the same side.

NOTE: We create the Meander pattern by alternating left and right knots one after the other. This means we tie a knot that starts with an “L”-shaped loop of the left string (as shown in the picture guide) and then do the same, but mirrored: we start an “L”-shaped loop with the right string and thread the left one through.

TIP: If we want to make the most of the string length, at a chosen moment we can swap the strings (that is, with the strings that “were just in the middle” we will wrap the two outer ones we have been knotting with so far).  This creates an interesting detail, and all the strings will be used up evenly.

5) Knot all the arms.

6) Knot the individual arms together so that they form a “basket” for the planter. In practice, we use the same knot, only we apply it to two strings from each of the two neighboring arms, which joins them together.

FIRST ROW

NOTE: You can join the first row with either 2 or 4 knots, as you can see in the picture. I usually make the joint from 4 knots in the Meander style, because it is flat and holds the planter nicely. We always knot two neighboring sides together until we have three joints between the arms. CAUTION: be precise and try to keep the spacing between the knots as even as possible, so that they are all at the same height.

7) Knot the second row.

NOTE: Knot the second row in the same way as the first: again, join two neighboring sides until there are three joints.

TIP: If you have already chosen a planter and want to be sure it fits the hanger perfectly, measure where the second row of knots will go. Planters look best in a hanger when the top row of knotting starts at the rim of the planter and the second row is at its middle. This way, the planter is most stable, looks nice, and the plant in it will not be needlessly squeezed. You can choose a planter for your hanger at Potzillas.

8) Tie all the strings together in one final knot. You can use an ordinary knot, tie it off with a short piece of string, or wrap it with a piece of string in the same way as before.

9) And we are DONE. Now you can also brush out the remaining ends below the last knot with a comb, if the string you used allows it.

That is all there is to it. Even if it may not seem so on the first try, it is very simple and, for some, a relaxing way to create.

Do not be afraid to embellish your next creations with, for example, the wooden accessories mentioned above or any others (beads, rings), or try playing with combinations of patterns and how tightly you pull the knots.

Macramé hangers for everyone.

Jana Beránková