Designer Yarn

Here’s a free video tutorial on how to make your own designer yarns. You can take boring yarn from thrift stores and combine them with beads for a one of a kind beautiful designer yarn.  Being a homemaker is more than just cooking and cleaning.  We get to do all the fun handcrafts too!

Designer Yarn

VIDEO TRANSCTIPT: Designer Yarn

Hey, Hi I’m Kira. What we’re going to show you today is how you can make a designer yarn, dress it up a little bit. You can take store-bought yarn that’s really plain and not interesting and make it something that will be more fun to knit with crochet with or whatever. You can take some crochet thread and you can feed beads onto it and ply it with something plain. These are both real plain when you look at them. Then when you get done you can end up with something like this. You’ve got your beads on there, you’ve got nice color contrast and it would be a lot of fun.

Video Intro and theme song

I’m Kira and welcome to our continuation on the series of spinning. Today we’re going to show you how to get a little more fancy. We’re not going to show you with handspun, homespun, however you want to say it. We’re going to show you how to take some yarn from the store and some crochet thread and have a little fun and make some designer yarn. So, what you can do is you can start out with some crochet thread and you can put your beads that you might want as an accent straight on. Like if I wanted to do a fun yarn for a little girl as an accent to go on something else this is what I would do.

I would start by feeding the beads on. If you need a needle please feel free to use one, it’s just my beads are big enough this time that I don’t need one. And I’m gonna take a second and I have 9 beads and I’m feeding them on. Feed on as many beads as you want! Because little girls are all about sparkles and pink.

Now we have them all strung on there and what we will do next is show you how to put them both onto a bobbin with this is just gonna be like your accent to keep on their to ply. For more detail on how to ply yarn, please watch: How to spin yarn part 2.

So here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna just throw the crochet thread on my lazy kate there. And, you don’t have to have a leader thread, you can actually, when you’re plying just take your Orpheus hook through like this and tie it straight on to the bobbin. Make life a little easier. Nothing fancy here, just a way to dress up stuff from the store and make it your own. So, we’re going to start plying backwards, first we’re going to check our tension and make sure it’s coming out like it’s supposed to. Sometimes what you’ll find with storebought threads is that when you go to ply them because of the way that they have spun it in the store you might run into a little bit of trouble. Those are things you’ll just have to work out as you go.

Now I’m going to start working on feeding a bead. You’re going to want to do what we call anchoring it down, because it could just slip back and forth and when someone is knitting or crocheting that’s going to drive them nuts! So what you want to do is we’re going to spin and we’re going to let the twist go a little bit. Which way was I going, ok, so I’m just going to anchor it down like that and I’m going to keep going. So you can see I’ve got this little bead on there, it looks cute, and little problem with the crochet thread twisting I might have to take it and put it in a basket so it’s free to spin around, and now I’ve done that other bead I’m going to slip this next one up to where I want it and I’m just going to go back to spinning and I’m going to make sure that I anchor this. So that it doesn’t slide and them I’m just going to go right back in. You can make them as close as you want . I mean if you want to get a ruler out and measure how far apart they are you could. I’m not that picky, I figure randomness kind of creates that fun designer yarn, so I’ll run with that. I’m gonna anchor it, and then I’m just gonna keep spinning.

Now sometime you’ll see that where a bead will come through and it wants to stick. As long as you know you’ve got a small enough bead to fit through the orifice, than just gently pull it through. If you have to kind of watch it as it comes around, see it came right through the hooks no problem. But there you see it on there I’ve got my pink white and purple beads on there. And now I’m going to go back to putting another one on. And you just keep going like this just remember to anchor them.

One of the tricks to anchoring them, I think is to keep this one firm in your hand and get the wheel going again, see I’m just holding it up and letting it twist around. You can do it as many times around as you want or as few. You can hear the bead clicking through. Let me show you one more bead and show you again how to hold your hands so that it gets grounded. So again Im holding this one straight out and this one up and I’m just kind of dropping my hand down a little you can see how it naturally just wrapped a few times there and here and then we’re just going to come right back and immediately grab another bead this could be a little tedious if you wanted them really close but then again can you go into a store and pick how close your beads are going to be together on your yarn? No, that’s why it’s fun to do it yourself. So here we go I’m just going to drop it down and go back. So there you have two that are close together. You can do them as close or as far apart as you want, just the importance again is to remember to anchor them so that you’re not getting sliding.

O.K., we’re just cut our thread and I’m going to finish feeding this through . I’m going to hold onto it, because unlike with it’s not going to stick as well, because you’ve got two slick fibers going here. They’re manmade and they haven’t got those hooks like wool does. There’s my bead. It wanted to stick a little but no problem. Ok, now we’re just going to feed this on to the bobbin, unhook it, and I’m just going to take the tension off so that it will spin freely. And I’m going to take it and wrap it around my arm and so you’ve go a nice little mini skein with all of those beads on there to play around with. You might also like crochet food. Please subscribe to our youtube channel.