Crochet Hangers

Do you have a pile of those annoying metal hangers laying around somewhere collecting dust? Do you have shirts that keep falling off hangers no matter what you do? Here's one solution my Nana taught me when I was a child. Somehow metal hangers kept popping up everywhere, either from work issued clothes or the dry cleaners, she always had a ton of them lying around her house, but instead of throwing them away she would crochet around them. Two things that came out of this: first they no longer left the ever annoying bumps in the shoulders of shirts, and second they kept slippery shirts from falling off. So today I'm going to do my first EVER tutorial and it's going to be how to make crochet hangers! These hangers can take anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes to complete, depending on how full you want the crochet to look, I prefer them pretty full looking so mine take about 30 minutes, but they're just as functional and pretty not as full (and it's quicker!). Also, if anybody is interested, I usually use either a size 8 or 9 hook, I used a 9 in this project because it was handy :) Cue annoying metal hangers! My favorite yarn is Caron Simply Soft, which I used in this project but any yarn will do. First we'll need to make a slip knot. To do so find the end of your yarn and make a loop with the end over the rest of the yarn. After you've done that pull the rest of your yarn through that loop to make another loop and pull the first loop tight by pulling the end of your yarn. Now it gets a little tricky before it gets pretty easy again. Take the slip knot and slide it over your hook; holding the slip knot in place yarn over (add a loop to your hook by bring the yarn from behind the hook over the top of it) and bring all of that through the middle of the hanger. Your skein of yarn should be behind the hanger and your hook with the now 2 loops (the slip knot and the yarn over loop) should be in front of the hanger. Yarn over again, making sure to keep the hanger inside this loop, and pull that loop through the first two loops, creating a single stich. You'll do this stitch all the way around the hanger, again making sure to keep the hanger inside every stitch so it's completely covered at the end. The first picture is of the first stitch, it didn't look like much of anything so the following pictures are of the process so it can be seen clearer. And here is the hanger with all the stitches. Again, you can make it as full or loose as you like or depending on how much time you want to spend on it ;) To get it as full as the one I made just keep pushing back the stitches as much as you can, they'll shrink up quite a bit. Now, to finish it up there's just a few final steps. At the top of the hanger, where the wires get twirled together to make the hook at the top, in that tiny little space that is still the hanger make all your stitches face away from the middle. Push your hook through the second stitch you made (it's easier for me than the first one and it'll get covered anyway), yarn over, and pull through the stitch and the loop on your hook, a slip stitch. At this point you can pull the loop up a little bit and cut it in the middle, pull the extra yarn away and you should be left with two tails, one from the very beginning and one from your last stitch. I forgot to take pictures of that step, but again it'll get covered so it's not extremely important that this step look pretty :) Tie these two tails together and pull them tight so they won't unravel. Cut four 10-12 inch pieces of yarn and tie a bow around the whole top, hiding the knot you just made. For some reason these pictures have decided that upside down is the new right side up and I can't get them to straighten up and fly right, so I'll put them up for now and when I finally get them to behave I'll edit this post and turn them around, for now though I hope these pictures help at least a little bit. And voila! You now have a hanger that your clothes won't fall off of, it was fairly inexpensive (especially if you have yarn already), and you have less trash now. They make great gifts too so if you're in a pinch these are pretty quick and easy. I hope I took enough pictures and explained things clearly, again this was my first tutorial ever so I'd love feedback, positive and constructive :) Happy crocheting! P.S. I saw afterwards that the pictures are HUGE!!!!!!!! My apologies, I've only ever posted pictures in a blog once and it was a long time ago and I couldn't remember what size I had them at, apparently it wasn't this size! Hopefully I'll have that down pat next time I post pictures. At least they weren't too small ;)