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How to make a giant cotton rope macrame tassel garland

Craft Projects· DIY projects· Macrame

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Man did I struggle with how to name this craft project again today. Is it a garland? A railing? Or just a giant macrame tassel hanging on a thick white cotton rope? Well, it’s all the above and then some. Wouldn’t you agree? I thought I’d originally hang this giant cotton rope macrame tassel garland around my huge brass pot in the living room but since I’m at the beach right now, I couldn’t even see if it will fit. Haha! Guess I have to wait until I get home and maybe trim those tassels up a bit more.

I’m obsessed with tassels and they definitely don’t have any other purpose than looking pretty as a clothing or home accessory. You can also check out my tutorial about how to make a huge tassel, my giant leather tassels, how to make yarn tassels, and how to make a large stacked tassel. This thick cotton rope tassel with wooden and macrame details fits right in. I love it so much and it would look really cool as a rope railing too with both tassels hanging down at the ends of the staircase.

How to make a giant cotton rope macrame tassel garland

Supplies needed:

  • 1.25″ thick cotton rope (I bought 10 feet of twisted cotton rope)
  • macrame yarn (make sure you buy macrame cotton rope as I did so the texture all looks the same)
  • 2 wooden cups
  • 1-1/4-inch hole saw drill attachment
  • fabric stiffener
  • tape (electrical tape, duct tape or packaging tape)
  • comb and brush
  • sharp crafting scissors
  • drill

Instructions:

When I came up with this tassel idea, I didn’t really knot how I would accomplish the project that I saw in my head and I ran into some issues until I knew exactly how to do it. That’s why the one tassel is finished already in the below photos and I’m showing you what I exactly did with the second tassel.

Drilling the cup holes

TIP: You can actually skip the cotton rope too and just make the tassels with the cups and macrame yarn. Just make sure you drill a small hole into the cups and add thin yarn instead of the thick rope. That way you have single tassels to hang somewhere without the heavy and thick cotton rope.

The hole saw drill bit is for drilling holes into the bottom of the wooden cups. You attach it to the drill as you do with any other drill bit.

drill bit to cut the hole into the wooden cups

When I drilled the holes into the cups, I actually ended up holding the cups between my feet standing. I had to put sneakers on to be able to get a good grip on the cup and stop it from spinning with the drill. You can put the cup into a vice too but I didn’t want to risk getting marks on the wood which is why I didn’t do that.

finding the center in the wooden cup to drill hole

The holes accidentally ended up being slightly off-centered even though I started out with the center. In the end, it didn’t matter because you can’t tell at all.

finished holes in wooden cups

The thick twisted white cotton rope fits exactly through the 1.25″ hole. It’s a nice tight fit and you have to twist the cup around the rope to move it up. The cotton rope comes with electrical tape tied around the end to prevent it from unraveling. Make sure you leave that on until you are making the tassels to avoid issues.

cotton rope next to wooden cup

threading cotton rope through the wooden cup

Creating the tassel part

Below you can see the one finished tassel and we’ll get to the macrame part further below.

Move the wooden cup up higher than the desired tassel size. Then use some tape to tightly tape off the rope where the cup hole will be. Make sure that the tape is the same height as the cup bottom thickness which is about 1 inch. You’ll know what I mean once you pull the cup back down. I had some of the tape showing at the top and had to recut the tape to hide it.

My cotton rope length from one taped area to the other is about 10-11 inches.

cotton rope hanging on a post to work on tassels

Now it is time to open up the bottom part of the cotton rope by removing the black tape and unraveling the yarn all the way up to the part where you taped the rope.

cutting tape at the bottom of the cotton rope

Then I sectioned off small parts of the rope and started tying knots at the bottom of the taped area.

unraveling the ends of the cotton rope

You don’t have to make it look pretty. This will all be hidden by the wooden cup. The purpose of knotting the yarn is to avoid the rope from unraveling in the future should the tape fail and to create a ledge for the cup to rest on when pulled down.

knotting pieces of cotton rope

See below how I kept tying knots around the perimeter.

knotting cotton rope around the perimeter

For the bottom fringe part of the tassel, I cut macrame yarn into 20-inch pieces. I ended up cutting way more than I even needed because I didn’t know how thick I wanted the tassels to be.

cutting macrame yarn pieces

I unraveled all the yarn and straightened it ahead of time. This is the step that I suggest not to do ahead of time because it wasn’t easy to separate in the end. When I want to straighten the macrame yarn after unraveling, I dampen the macrame yarn with the fabric stiffener, comb it and dry and straighten everything with my hair straightening iron.

This can be a very timely and tedious process and if you don’t feel like doing it, you don’t have to. You can just leave the macrame yarn twisted and skip straightening it altogether.

straightening macrame yarn with hair straightener

I like the look of the macrame yarn unraveled and straightened because it matches the yarn of the cotton rope. I love using the below brush (click HERE) to comb large areas. It works really well.

brushing unraveled macrame yarn with large brush

To form the bottom part of the tassel with the cut 20-inch pieces, I gathered a bunch of them, folded them in half, and tied them to the knotted ends at the bottom of the rope. Since I had unraveled the yarn ahead of time, I couldn’t tell anymore how many pieces I took. I’m guessing it was about 20 pieces.

adding sections of macrame yarn to cotton rope

Hide the knot under the bunch as shown below. Like I mentioned before, don’t worry if it looks messy because that part will be hidden by the wooden cups.

tying a knot around macrame yarn sections

I repeated this 4 times all the way around the perimeter of the cotton rope to form a tassel. In the end, you want the cup to fit tightly around the entire knotted and bunched macrame yarn to get the tassel as tick as possible. I kept pulling it down to see and even added some more macrame yarn in some areas until it was really tight to get the cup over the yarn.

close up of the head of the tassel

side view of cotton rope and macrame yarn

I wanted to show you that you don’t have to add the macrame detail and can leave the tassel plain. The macrame detail is actually my macrame garland tutorial without the wooden beads so the square knots can be uninterrupted. I just tied the garland around the top of the tassel. That’s it!

Here is the video tutorial for the macrame garland:

(click on the triangle of the image to watch the video and if you watching it on a different device than a computer, then hold it sideways for better viewing)

macrame garland for cotton rope tassel

For my garland I used 24 pieces of macrame cut 6 times longer than the size of the tassel which is about 9 inches long. Then use that yarn to make a garland as shown in the video.

tying macrame garland onto cotton rope tassel garland

When working on the tassel bottom, I found different areas to just hang the cotton rope.

At the end of this project, you just have to comb and trim the tassels to the desired length. They would look great shorter too. It’s all preferential.

view of both tassels before trimming

I even like the look of some of the yarn unraveled and straightened and some not as shown below.

I left one of the tassels plain and the other with the added macrame garland tied around to show you the two different looks. My finished tassels are around 9-inches long.

Finished giant cotton rope macrame tassel garland

My daughter took some of the photos and even took one of me which doesn’t happen too often.

hanging the giant cotton rope macrame tassel garland

I love how the giant cotton rope garland and tassels look tied around the fence post in the dunes leading to the beach but I also know that I will find a spot in my home where I will love it just as much.

view of living room

(click to tour my home)

For now, the tassel ended up on my newly made-over shelf:

rope tassel hanging on shelving unit

view of giant cotton rope macrame tassel garland towards the dunes

distant view of giant cotton rope macrame tassel garland towards the dunes

view of giant cotton rope macrame tassel garland towards the beach

closeup view of giant cotton rope macrame tassels

side view of giant cotton rope macrame tassel garland

beach view of giant cotton rope macrame tassel garland

how to make a giant macrame cotton rope tassel

I hope you enjoyed this project again today. I started turning off the ads inside my blog posts on the first two days after publishing for those of you who sign up for my email list. You can sign up HERE. I hope that makes it easier to read without ads everywhere.

Tschüß,

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Comments

  1. Cassie Bustamante says

    July 6, 2020 at 6:36 am

    this is such a cool and unique project and i love how it looks styled at the beach!

    • Julia says

      July 6, 2020 at 6:39 am

      Thanks Cassie! My favorite part is hanging it up at the beach and taking photos 😉

  2. Debbie says

    July 6, 2020 at 8:45 am

    I love your rope tassels! So unique and beautiful!

    • Julia says

      July 6, 2020 at 9:58 am

      Thank you Debbie

  3. Sandy Mcallister says

    July 6, 2020 at 9:09 am

    Gorgeous. I love your tassel rope.

    • Julia says

      July 6, 2020 at 9:58 am

      Thanks Sandy! It was fun to make

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Cuckoo4Design


I’m a German citizen living in the US who is cuckoo for all things DIY, design and pets. This is my design journey of our small home on a budget. Come stay a while and look around.

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