Beautiful Nursery Decor With Wire and Wool

I received my first 3d printer for Christmas and I'm learning fusion 360 right now.

Why do I tell? Well, because it's the beginning of this instructable idea.

I started with fusion 360 and I needed to design something which is not too complicated, but still useful. I draw a tube and somehow it reminded me of my Kindergarten time when we used to craft a lot with wool and spool knitting. I didn't spool knit or french knit (or used the Strickliesel, how it's called in german) for an age but I still remembered the fun I had doing it. But what to do with the created wool-worms?

If you google "wool and wire" you can find a lot of nursery decor signs.

It's not new, but it's new to me.

And I like the outcome :-)

A nursery decor sign for a friend's grandniece, I hope she (and her parents) like it too.

I hear you saying "But I don't have a 3d printer" or "But I don't want to wait until the print is finished"? Quickly jump over to step 4.

Material:

• Wool in your preferred color ( I used 50g/165m (1oz3/4 / 180yds.))
• Wire (I used 1mm/0.039" but I would use 1,2mm/0.047'' the next time, because it's a little bit wabbly)
• scotch tape
• thread for stitching the parts together
• opt: an old pen with big diameter
• opt: heat shrink tubing

My spool knit design doesn't look fancy, but you can believe me, it took me a long time until I got it into the shape that I imagined.

The design is also attached, so feel free to print your own.

1. Print your tube (I used black pla)
2. Cut of 5cm /2" of the wire and bend it to an u-shape
3. Or much easier, stick your wire into one of the holes, set your pliers and bend the wire around the pliers, then just cut it to an equal lenght
4. Repeat until you have 4 u-shapes
5. Stick the "U"s into the holes in your tube (if they don't fit well enough, add a tiny drop of super glue to fix it)
6. Bend the upper part of the closed "U"s a little bit apart, this will help you later with not losing your stitches while knitting

Create a knitting helper

While you could just use a simple piece of wire, or a small hook, I created myself a little helper (as you can see in the pictures)

1. Lead your wool through the knitting tube
2. Attach it to the bottom, either fix it with your palm or stick a piece of tape to it
3. Start wrapping your wool around your hooks; counterclockwise around each hook, but clockwise around all four of them (please have a look at the pictures, it's hard to explain with words, but very easy to see :-) )
4. When you reach your first hook again, keep the wool tight and above your loop.
5. Use your wire (or crochet hook) to move the loop from the bottom and guide it over the hook. Your tightened wool is now the "new loop"
6. Continue with the next hook
7. Repeat until you reach the desired lenght.
8. Then cut off your wool at 10cm/4'' and instead of creating a new loop with your wool, pull the loose end through the loops and take them of the hooks

Well, but maybe you have an old big pen, or another small diameter tube (should be a diameter around 10mm/0.4'')

1. Cut your wire and form it into u-shapes (you need 4 "U"s
2. Take apart your pen
3. Tape the "U"s in an equal distance onto your tube
4. Secure the ends with more tape
5. Bend the closed part of the "U"s a little bit apart
6. It's not looking nice, but it's also doing the job :-)

You could probably form the name freehand (if you have a very good feeling for wire and proportions) but I failed while trying it freehand :-)

So I wrote down the name with a continuous line (like a wire) to see where I have to bend the wire and which letters will be difficult and also to get an impression about the size of my tricotin lettering.

To guide the wire into the wool-worm I bend a small loop into the wire to prevent piercing it everywhere. It worked well, but you still need to be careful, otherwise, you pierce everywhere through.

Then follow your own lines.

I realized, that my drawing of the "th" was not looking good, so I changed it while bending the wire.

At the end, the name was a little big longer than my drawing, but it's fine with me.

1. Measure the diameter size of your loop with holding the wire at your name lettering.
2. Thread the wool on the wire
3. Close the wire with two small hooks and secure it with tape.
4. Knot the wool together.

I never crocheted flowers before, but I wanted to have them as a decoration on my loop.

So I searched for it here and found a lot of Instructables, some were good, some were not.

I followed this one "Crochet roses" from kayalishous (thank you very much, by the way), and created three small flowers with fluffy leaves.

I secured the leaves with black thread on the back of the flowers.

Before I sew it all together I did some dry fitting until it pleased my eye :-)

I read, that you could also use a glue gun, but I was too afraid to drop some glue to the wrong places, or that I want to change something later.

So I just used black thread and a needle, a very modifiable process (even though I didn't need it).

The three flowers cover the seam of the white loop.

I really like the outcome of this wool-thread-work (I already mentioned it).

This won't be my last french knitted wool decor, even though it takes a while to do the knitting.

If you'll also wire lettering a name, please share a picture of your decor. I would love to see it.