Greenery

The finished product! It only took two months for me to get it dyed, planted and hung.

{macramé planter}

I will say this, macramé is satisfyingly mindless. You get to tie a bunch of knots! If you've ever spent a long summer making friendship bracelets or begging a camp counselor to give you more lanyard material, you are a prime candidate for learning macramé.

{macramé planter}

I started by searching all over for tutorials. I ended up mostly using this one, although I think it may be geared towards people with more experience because I had to do separate searches to learn how to tie each of the knots mentioned. I'd still recommend it to start with if you're willing to be patient. It makes you practice a lot of knots and you get a good sense for how to make a macramé plant hanger.

I bought two packages of this 6 mm cotton rope which I loved, although it is pretty thick so you end up needing more length. There are also thinner all cotton options available. If possible, I'd recommend seeking out an all cotton choice. It does cost a little more, and it takes a bit more practice to work with it but you can really see the difference in quality in the finished product. I tested out some synthetic clothesline and it was unpleasantly shiny and the texture wasn't great.

I made the entire hanger and then I tore it all out and redid it. That cotton cord isn't cheap and my knots were improving as I practiced more. The second effort has noticeably better tension than the first.

Knotting crafts are all about tension. Don't get frustrated if everything is looking wonky in the beginning. Relax, breathe, and practice. It takes a while to find your tension, so focus on that. Once you get a feel for it, everything will start to look better. If you are pulling as tight as is humanly possible, it will be difficult and uneven. If you're going in the other direction and not tightening enough, it will be loose and uneven. I don't think there's any way to have perfect tension immediately, so I resign myself to a learning curve anytime I try a new material and just know I'll have to take the work apart later.

The natural cotton looked beautiful on its own but I wanted something a little more modern, if that's possible with a hanging plant that we'll apparently be treating like a baby until we manage to kill it. I dip dyed it navy and I don't even care if ombré is on its way out. The glossy white pot is an inexpensive planter from Sunset Nursery.

To dip dye it I just used Rit dye in navy and set it up so that I could slowly submerge it at 20 minute intervals. I wanted a soft fade into white so I diluted the dye a bit more before dipping the last section.

{dyeing}

Washing it all out in the sink was a huge pain and it came out a little less vibrant than I intended but I'm happy with it.

{drying}

Finally getting it done was such a rush that I worked on two more (much simpler) versions using the thinner cotton cord this weekend and I have high hopes of getting them up in a more reasonable time frame.