These past few weeks we’ve been using our knowledge of macramé knots to create a plant hanger. This piece will be something the students can take home and I think is a good introduction to macramé as craft. Later, I hope to help the students use macramé as art, but while are are creating these it makes me wonder what the difference is. Is craft just decoration? Can craft be art when done in a particular way, with a particular intention?
Week 3: We started our first plant hanger project.
I pre-cut all the cords for each student according to the pattern I usually use for macramé plant hangers, which I teach to adults quite often and as an airbnb experience via Distill Creative. During our class, I set up a photo backdrop pole hanger which functions as our stand where we hang our projects. This works fairly well, however, over the past few weeks we’ve gotten more and more students and so I’ve had bring out these macramé stands, which we put on the backs of chairs!
One student is using the macramé hanger on the back of a chair.
We took about three weeks to work on this project. I’ll admit, I thought we would finish it in two sessions, but because we had many students added on each week, which is awesome, and everyone moved at a different speed, we needed more time. My class started as mostly Spanish-speaking, but we’ve attracted many ladies from the Chinese Macramé class (which I also sat in on a few weeks ago) and now I’d say the class is about 40% Spanish-speaking, 40% Chinese-speaking, and 10% English-speaking. I am really happy that our class is integrated as I know that was one of the desires of our participants, and me!
A view from the Chinese Macramé class I sat in on. It is super complicated and uses much thinner yarn than I usually use!
Week 4: We added beads!
Another really awesome development in our class is that students have started helping each other. I’ll turn around and see one student showing another student the next knot and it just melts my heart. This happens even between students who do not speak the same language! It’s really cool to see and helps me out a lot as I am only one person and sometimes many students need attention at the same time. My class has been about twelve people consistently and usually grows over the course of the two and a half hours.
This past week I had my sister substitute because I had some travel planned (more on this soon!). All my students wanted to make another plant hanger, so we’ll do another couple weeks where they can create their own design!
Week 5: A finished plant hanger!
Week 5: Helping each other on their projects.
Week 6: Found a way to measure the cord on the knobs on the wall! Cutting new cord for next project.