I need a more succinct name for this project, but I’m thrilled to share my woven American flag on an antique grate with you today!
If you live in a very old house or spend your free time rifling through dusty finds in architectural salvage shops (as one does) then you might have been lucky enough to come across an antique grate or two. They could be floor grates, wall grates, or window grates.
They are all amazing, but the first question is how many of them does one person need?
I have two. My husband thinks that is two too many, but I think he just hasn’t seen their potential yet.
I did not buy our grates from a shop, but I would have. These particular grates came with our very old house.
The second question is what do you do with antique grates that no longer serve their original purpose?
You can always hang them on a wall as art, and I have done that.
In fact, I have an entire blog post dedicated to that very topic. It’s super great amazing.
But what if you were to take the creativity up a notch and weave a design onto an antique wall grate?
Has anyone done that?
Probably. I haven’t Googled it.
Has anyone wove an American flag on an antique wall grate?
They have now! You’re seeing it here first.
This is not a hallucination by AI. I did make this with my own two hands and it took forever. All my favorite projects do. Ha!
The weaving process was pretty straightforward, even though I don’t think this is technically weaving by definition. I don’t have any right angles happening with the threads. Instead, the warp (lengthwise yarn) of my weave is the grid on the grate. I don’t know if this matters.
Whatever it is technically called by the definition police, I used what I had on hand – yarn – and tied it around one section of the grate and started weaving it over and under the bars of the grate. The red, white, and blue yarn is tied together, meaning if you were to undo the weaving, it would be one continuous length of multi-colored yarn.
I like the symbolism of that – how we are all connected in important ways. If we lose a connection, things start to unravel.
The stars of the woven American flag, all fifty of them, are made from a surprising crafty item.
Bracelet beads.
My kids have a beading kit, and some of the beads are flexible plastic. This meant I could snip into them and then position the bead on a single strand of yarn.
I know my “stars” aren’t actual stars. I learned my shapes a long time ago. As the artist, I invoked my creative liberties to solve an unanticipated problem with the stars.
The problem I encountered with tying stars with yarn, weaving stars on the flag, or using star-shaped beads, is that it was hard to get anything to stay in position and not slide around on the weaving. I also didn’t want to introduce glue to this project. That seemed like a fast pass to regret.
Bottom line, everything I tried looked sloppy, and I’d come too far on this project for that to happen.
Speaking of sloppy, I was at first dismayed by the fact that the design of the grate meant that I had jagged ends on my woven American flag where the rectangles met the diamond-shapes.
I could have avoided this by ending the weaving before I got to the transition of the grate design. The tradeoff would have been a square flag, not a rectangle, which wouldn’t do.
Cognitive dissonance, my reliable friend, set in, and I reminded myself that even though flag protocol says you’re supposed to replace a flag when it gets a little ratty on the ends, those are my favorite American flags.
They give off strong “I’ve seen some crazy, disturbing stuff, and survived” vibes. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take my hope wherever I can get it these days.
The best part of this story is that the weaving on the grate was actually suggested to me by one of my sweet blog readers. Once the seed was planted, I could not get the idea out of my head until I gave it a go.
You might be surprised to learn that you all are often a part of my brainstorming process, whether you know it or not. I might not use a direct idea, but a conversation might lead to another idea.
What a great gift it is to have people in my life, some I’ve never met in person, that contribute to my creative process.
It’s almost like we’re all woven together.
Imagine that.
How do you think my woven American flag turned out? Do you think it was worth the hours I put into making it?
You can always comment on this blog post, email me here, or reach out via Instagram or Facebook. I respond to all of your comments.
Happy Crafting!
P.S. I’m pretty sure Handy Husband is a convert to keeping the grates now. He said, “That flag looks so good!” That’s about as effusive as he gets.
P.P.S. Don’t be surprised if I try weaving another design on the second grate I have. It was a bit tedious, but fun to see the design come together. I spent around eight hours making this one.
Thanks for hanging out with me today. I hope you gleaned an idea or at least had a good time while you were here! If you’d like another blog post to read, I’ve got you covered.
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