String Art

According to Google, string art first started in England in the late 19^th century but became popular as hobby items in the 1960s and 70s.  I was too young for it then but my husband bought me a string art kit for Christmas and I’ve only just gotten around to doing it.  The kit came with a thick booklet with about a dozen or so designs in it.  I was torn between the bee and the lion.  I opted for the lion, despite it having the longest list of instructions – 3000 of them! 

The first job, which wasn’t that thrilling, was to position 180 screws into the canvas.  This took me almost an hour to do.

To make my life easier when reading the many lines of numbers, I made a windowed slider that slid around the edge of the page to hold it in place.  As each line was completed, I moved the slider down to reveal the next row on numbers.

There was a plastic thread holder in the kit which made it much easier to get the thread between the screws.  The trick seemed to be to maintain the tension otherwise the string quickly unravelled.

By half way down the first page, the outline of the face was just starting to take shape.  I had a little trouble with the thread getting twisted and knotting to start with so had to keep tying off and restarting.  My technique must have improved as it didn’t happen so much later on in the process.

Gradually, the general positions of the eyes, nose and mouth started to appear.  When my thread wasn’t getting knotted up, I found the process quite meditative and relaxing.

Then the outside got darker and the features developed more shading. It was quite remarkable watching the lion face slowly emerge from the string.

After I’d completed all the stages, I applied some Fray Check, which is a kind of superglue for fabric, to the thread on each of the screws before trimming off the ends of the threads as the last thing I wanted was for any knots to come undone!

The kit came with a black frame which really finished off the canvas.  It’s the kind of picture that looks better from a distance so we found the perfect spot to hang it. 

It took me about 3¾ hours to complete (not including putting in the screws) but here’s a considerably shorter time-lapse video showing the stringing process.