Macrame Plant Hanger

I learned how to macrame not too long after my daugh­ter was born. I used to make plain beaded jew­elry in junior high and high school using string or fish­ing line but didn’t dis­cover this method of dec­o­ra­tive knot­ting till in the course of shop­ping at a local bead store, that a friend of mine owned, I observed a neck­lace she was mak­ing to be sold in her shop. I asked her to show me a cou­ple of basic knots. I then bought some hemp twine and went home to make some jewelry.

I made sev­eral pieces for both myself and Brian, my hus­band. I make neck­laces, anklets and bracelets com­bined with var­i­ous beads when I was first learn­ing. This twine can also be used around the house being that I uti­lized it as clothes­line for along time. The 3mm rope is rated at 170 lb. test.

After explor­ing this tech­nique using a .8 mm and 1.0 mm twine, I exper­i­mented with 2mm and 3mm twine. I had seen neck­laces made with this thick­ness of twine but they seemed too bulky. I began to won­der what other things I could make with this twine using the macrame tech­nique. One day at my friends shop, I noticed a plant hanger made using macrame but with a dif­fer­ent kind of twine. I noticed the beauty and stur­di­ness of the items and decided to to try to make one to hang my plants up in my window.

I wres­tled for a long time with what to use for the top hanger. I finally decided upon using a brass ring. I found mul­ti­ple sizes in the local craft sec­tion of a big box retail out­fit. I made my first one con­cen­trat­ing more on how to make the plant hanger itself. I even­tu­ally exper­i­mented and decided that the whole piece would look much bet­ter if I wrapped the brass ring with the hemp twine. It gives the plant hanger a nice, fin­ished, even look. I liked them so much I asked if my friend would accept them as con­sign­ment in her store. I sold sev­eral of them and mostly used the pro­ceeds to buy more sup­plies of beads and twine.

After you com­plete this you need to cut 8 very long pieces of twine. Feed them through the hole in the ring to the mid­dle of the cord mak­ing sure that each end of each string meets the other. Use an Alpine coil knot to bind the strings together near the top clos­est to the ring. Then divide the stings into four groups of four cords. Use the half knot and the square knot mak­ing dif­fer­ent pat­terns as you go. Exper­i­ment to see what you like best. When you get to your desired length it is help­ful to have ready a light­weight round object to sim­u­late the plant cir­cum­fer­ence in order to make the bot­tom bas­ket holder. Take two strings from two neigh­bor­ing groups of strands. Join them together about four to six inches below the stop­ping part of the your macrame chains using the square knot until all the strands are con­nected to each other. Repeat again join­ing two strings from two neigh­bor­ing strands 3–4 inches below the pre­vi­ous square knot until all the strands are con­nected to each other. When you have reach the desired depth of your bas­ket holder, join the strings together and bind them tight with another Alpine coil knot. My friend no longer owns that par­tic­u­lar store (nor do the cur­rent own­ers offer con­sign­ment cur­rently) but a new out­fit has just started busi­ness and they have three plant hang­ers hand­made by me for sale in their store. I have three more in progress at the present time.  Some other macrame plant hanger instruc­tions are here.

Not only have I made plant hang­ers but I have put the art of macrame to use with other crafts as well. I made a gui­tar strap for my hus­band, Brian, years ago where I took a burlap strap and cov­ered it with patch­work mate­r­ial of an old tie and cor­duroy using macrame for each end of the strap. I have made baby teethers with it recy­cling old baby toys or using non-toxic wooden beads as a rat­tle. Key­chains are a favoite of mine to make with macrame because they can be made quickly and I can get really cre­ative in dec­o­rat­ing them with beads. I am cur­rently work­ing on mak­ing a pat­tern for a Kleen Kan­tean car­rier with shoul­der strap.

If you found this post help­ful in your craft­ing endeav­ors, please leave me a com­ment. I would love to hear from you if you used these instruc­tions to make your own plant hangers.

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Congratulations Kept Woman!

Con­grat­u­la­tions and thanks to the Kept Woman for being the very first com­menter on my brand new blog. You have won three lovely hemp-twine teethers which were per­son­ally hand­made by me. Please email me with your details so I can send them to you. These three teethers were made using the twisted macrame knot and the dec­o­ra­tions are small mul­ti­col­ored beads in the shape of farm ani­mals and gar­den insects and keys.

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