I love crochet, holiday-themed garlands but tend to dislike the time it takes to crochet each piece. By the time I make just one part I get bored! But I still wanted to make a garland out of yarn to decorate with for Valentine’s Day. Then I remembered a photo I saw on Pinterest of some yarn-wrapped garlands for Christmas and decided to try to make a Valentine’s day one. And it turned out so cute that I figured I’d share how you can make your own!
Materials
To make this yarn garland you will need:
- Two colors of Bernat velvet yarn
- A few feet of cream colored yarn (or alternatively twine)
- Cardboard (I used one side of a cereal box)
- Pen/pencil
- Marker
- Hot glue gun & hot glue
- One heart template (you can make your own or use the printout I have attached here)
Make Your Plan
The first thing you need to so is determine how many hearts you want on your garland. I made mine 9 hearts long with 5 of them made from light pink velvet yarn and the other 4 from dark pink velvet yarn. This made my garland about 3 feet long, so you may need to make more or fewer hearts depending on the length you want your garland to be.
Creating the Hearts
Each heart is made from a cardboard base wrapped in velvet yarn. This yarn is secured with just a few dots of hot glue, which makes for simple, fast heart creation.
Start by creating a heart template from a scrap piece of cardboard. This allows you to ensure that your hearts will be uniform in size and shape.
Once you have your template ready, go ahead and trace the number of hearts you want for your garland. Then you’ll want to plug in your hot glue gun to give it enough time to heat up. Once it’s plugged in go ahead and cut out your heart bases – I had a total of 9.
Wrapping the Hearts
Now that your bases and hot glue gun are ready, it’s time to start wrapping!
Begin by using a small amount of glue to attach the end of the yarn to the back of the heart as shown below:
Then proceed to wrap the yarn around the cardboard from the widest part of the heart down towards the pointed tip until you get something like this:
Place a small amount of hot glue to the tip of the cardboard heart on both the front and back sides (as shown in the picture above). Then quickly wrap the yarn around the tip until it is completely covered. It can be hard to get the yarn to stay on this point so you’ll want to make sure you have plenty of glue on the cardboard, and that all of the yarn attaches straight to the glue. If the yarn is wrapped over itself around the point and not touching the glue directly it will likely start to unravel. You should end up with something like this:
You’ll then wrap the yarn back up the heart, covering the area you just wrapped with a second layer and stopping where you began. Apply some hot glue to the middle of the back of the heart to secure your yarn.
Then run the yarn up the back side and over to the front through the little valley between the top two bumps on the heart as depicted below:
Add a bit of hot glue to the inside of the top right hump, then wrap on the right side of the heart to cover the top right hump of the heart. The images below show how to do that:
Once you’ve reached this point, apply some hot glue to the exposed cardboard (on the front or the back) and switch the direction you are wrapping. Start where you applied the hot glue, bringing the yarn from the top right of the heart down and over the left side, continuing until the entire right side of the heart is covered with yarn.
You will then follow the same pattern as before to cover the left side of the heart. Add some hot glue, wrap from the inside to the outside, then add more hot glue and wrap the other direction.
(I forgot to take a picture of this part, so I flipped an earlier image to show how you start wrapping the left side, whoops!)
After the heart has been completely covered in yarn, you’ll want to break up the uniform lines all over the heart. Wrap the yarn in multiple directions, somewhat randomly, wrapping only once in each direction. This creates lots of overlapping strings that make for a nice pattern over the top of the heart. Use hot glue to anchor your yarn where necessary.
Now repeat the wrapping steps with each of your hearts. Here’s what all of mine looked like once they were done:
Creating the Garland
The first step in creating the full garland is creating your base string. To do this you’ll need to determine how far apart you want your hearts to be and how much string you want on each side to hang your garland with. I decided to have my hearts 4 inches apart with 1 foot of extra string on each side.
So to ensure your hearts are evenly spaced and centered, you’ll need a marker and scissors.
Start by making a mark 1 foot from the end (or longer depending on how much extra string you want on the end of the garland).
Then mark the distance between each of the hearts until the number of dots on your string reaches the number of hearts you have. So I made one dot every 4 inches until I had 9 dots on my string.
Then cut the string 1 foot out from the last dot you made (or longer if your first dot was placed farther than 1 foot in).
I then set my hearts out in the order that I wanted them to hang on the garland.
Here’s a fun little “behind the scenes” of that step featuring the Bubbins:
Anyways, back to the tutorial.
Now you’ll want to thread that string onto a needle and start string the hearts onto the garland. I worked from the right to the left.
Be sure to center each heart over the dot. By having the string peek back up in the middle of the back of the heart you can be sure that your hearts are all equally spaced and centered on the dot.
The hearts should be fairly secure, but if you find yours are sliding around on the string add some hot glue over the dot on the back of the string to keep the hearts in place.
And you’ve completed your garland!
Hanging the Garland
I found the best way to hang this garland in our small apartment was on clear command hooks on the wall. They’re super easy to attach and remove while being fairly inconspicuous.
To simplify the hanging process, tie a slip knot in your string about 4 inches out from each of your last hearts.
Then hang each slip knot on one of the command hooks and pull them both tight. Your garland will be centered, anchored well, and unlikely to fall off.
And that’s it! If you make one of your own I would love to see it – just post a picture on your social media with #lifewithbubbins so I can give it a like!
Thanks for sticking through to the end of the tutorial!
