Amidst The Rain A Woven Sun

The boy and I sat at home yesterday peering out at the rain, wondering what to do with our restless little selves... Surely something could bring smiles to our faces, brighten our dampened spirits, and keep us out of certain trouble... As it turns out, the answer came to us from our dear friend the recycling bin! Surprising, yes? Well, perhaps not...

Tutorial ☀ Woven Cereal Box Sun ☀

You will need:

A cereal box

Several bits of variously coloured yarn

Plate or round thing to use as a template

Pencil

Ruler

Pair of scissors

Hole punch

1. Trace out your plate or chosen round thing onto the cereal box.

2. Cut out the circle.

3. Using a ruler and pencil, create a wagon wheel pattern on the cardboard circle. Draw a circle 1/2 inch (13 mm) from the edge of the cardboard circle. Also draw out a small circle in the center of the cardboard circle.

4. Using an exacto knife and ruler, cut slits along the spokes of your wagon wheel. When cutting your slits, do NOT pass the lines created by the drawn edge and inner circles.

5. Make a "yarn needle" by cutting out a little cereal box rectangle, rounding off one of the short ends and punching a hole into the other short end. Tie your first bit of yarn into your "yarn needle". The bits of yarn don't have to be very long; a couple of feet (~60 cm) will do nicely, but you can make them as long or as short as you like.

6. With the tail end of your yarn in back of your work (unlike we've shown here), begin weaving the yarn into your circle, in and out, in and out. The yarn needle helps make this go quite smoothly for little fingers. Go around as many times as you wish with your first colour. When you've gone around as many times as you like, secure the start and end of the yarn with a knot in back.

7. Continuing with the next colour, weave in and out as before, this time going over and under the opposite spokes as you would if you were weaving a basket. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until you've filled your circle.

8. Create a perforated line at the edge of your circle using your hole punch.

9. Stitch a piece of yarn into the perforations to finish off the piece, using the ends as a hanger.

Notes:

1. Additional steps we'd have taken to make this even better had we (um... I) been thinking clearly at the time:

Step 8 1/2. From your cereal box, cut out a second circle the same size as your original circle. With bad sides together, perforate the edge of that circle exactly to match the first. This would finish off the back quite neatly as opposed to the mess of knots we have back there as it stands. Complete step 9 as written but with the 2 pieces sandwiched bad sides together.

2. The boy really enjoyed this craft, and was very proud of his handiwork. However, he completed only half the weaving by himself before tiring. For children, I'd make the original circles significantly smaller, maybe half the size. Ours is 8" (20 cm) in diameter.

3. I used orange plarn (yarn made from a plastic bag) to finish off the final bit of weaving.

The boy has claimed our creation for his room, but I think our woven sun would make a lovely Christmas ornament too, don't you think? I'll just have to steal it back when the time comes... ho ho ho...

Have a fantastic day now, and I'll see you again very soon!