Hiya Friends,
Another day, another DIY project, although this one if more of an upcycle but fun none the less.
For a bit of backstory to this project, originally when we moved into our home we decided that we would use blue tones for accent colours throughout our home. But after a year and a half our tastes have changed and we want to go for a more neutral, natural style. So with that being said we had a very blue blanket (which we were gifted) which no longer suited our style and instead of giving it away or throwing it out we thought we would try and upcycle it to better suit our new theme.
Now of course I forgot to take an actual before photo so I have a terribly cropped photo for reference but you get the idea.
Materials:
Bleach
Water
Bucket
Wool/yarn
Scissors
Wool needle
Method:
1. First things first, we need this blanket not to be blue anymore. So I researched how to bleach very dark materials (thanks google) and saw a general consensus of 1 part bleach to 10 parts water. I also read that it’s also best to wet your material prior to bleaching/dying so that the bleach spreads evenly. After two hours of sitting in this solution there was absolutely no colour change.... so I thought that the solution needed to be stronger due to how dark this blanket actually is. So the new solution is now 1 part bleach to 5 parts water. In all honesty I don’t remember how long we had this soaking for but when the water started to turn green I would quickly rinse the blanket, dispose of the green bleach solution and replace it with a fresh batch. I repeated this 3-4 times until the blanket was as white as I thought it was going to get.
2. Next this thing was going through the washing machine to soften it up again and remove any bleach from the material and then hang it out to dry!
3. Now to spruce this up a bit we are going to add tassels to both short sides of the blanket! And this is super easy to do. You simply need to wrap your yarn or choice around a book (or anything firm) which I thought was the ideal size for the length of tassels I wanted. I wrapped my yarn around the book 50 times. The more you wrap the fuller the tassel.
4. Next, you will want to take another piece of yarn (mine was about 20cm) and thread it under the wrapped yarn and wiggle it to the top.
5. Tie a knot in this piece of yarn to hold all the treads together somewhat. Now I found it easiest to tie a loose knot and then slide all the yarn off the book before tightening the knot completely and adding a double knot for security.
6. Then we want to cut the end of the threads opposite to where we just tied the knot to open up the tassel. You could stop here but I wanted to add bit more detail.
7. Just take another small piece of yarn and tie a double knot about an inch from the top of the tassel. I then neatly wrapped another piece of yarn around this knot about 10 times to give it a more finished look. Then you just cut the end and thread it back under this new wrapped section to hide and secure it. Tassel done! And repeat....
9. Originally I thought that I would add 5 tassels to each short side but when it was laid out it
looked a bit empty so we ended up deciding to make 7 per short side, 14 in total.
10. Now to attach them to the blanket. I threaded the top loose strands of the tassel through the yarn needle and pushed this through the corner of the blanket. I then came back over the top and through the same whole I created initially with the first stitch. I repeated this to have a total of 3 stitches.
11. To finish off I pushed the yarn needle through the top of the tassel and out the bottom and trimmed it to match all the other lengths of yarn!
12. Now just make sure your tassels are evenly spread and repeat the previous two steps until all the tassels are attached.
How is that for a glow up?! Although I don’t think I’m quite finished, I think I want to die it a more natural colour and am thinking I might try a natural die using onion skins… so stay tuned for that post!
We hope this post brings you some inspiration!
Love TM xx
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