How to Make a Hanging Potted Plant Rope Holder: Kinda

AKA: How to impress your loved one by making her the hanging potted plant holder that she wanted to buy, when you really didn't know what the heck you were doing.

Making a Potted plant hanger out of a Key ring, Rope or twine & two Beers.

My first Instructable, so please be kind, but comments welcomed!

Step 1: Gather the Materials!

For this you will need the following

*2 Beers- Start drinking the first one as you gather your materials, Second one stays in a cool place (fridge or cooler) until you reach the later steps... you will know which ones. If you are under the required drinking age, please feel free to substitute Red Bull, Mountian Dew, your favorite soda, or skip this item entirely.

*Rope- You can use pretty much any type of rope, string, yarn, cord etc so long as it suits the application (holds up to the weight of the plant.) i.e. don't use thread to make a hanger for a Ficus.

• Ring of some sort- I used a empty Key ring, but feel free to use any type of "ring" you can find. (O'ring, D'ring etc.) However I wouldn't recommend using your, your wife's or anyone else's wedding ring.
• Empty Pot, or Potted plant- Generally you want to have an idea of the size of the potted plant you want to hang. In this case, we have a baby spider plant. The Blue pot is what eventually it would be transplanted into.
• Patience.... and about 30 min.

Step 2: Prep.

Start pulling some rope. For this small pot, I pulled about 36' of rope cut into 6' lengths (6 pieces)
I know it's a lot, but I wanted to make sure I had enough since I've never done this before, as well as possibly allowing more room for a bigger pot in the future.

Step 3: Making Your "supports"

Ok, now that you spent the past 2 min measuring rope against your chest and cutting it with on-lookers wondering what the heck you are doing... let's start with the support structure for the plant.

Take the ring, and run one of the 6' lengths of rope through. Make the ends even and tie it off at the top. I tried to leave about an inch from the loop to the knot to allow the rope to stay as close to the other supports later. Each support will be made of two 3' pieces of rope so, 1 knot, 1 support etc. Repeat for remaining supports. Try to keep the knots even across the span of your supports.

Now here is where you can take some liberty. Add as many supports as you like (I would recommend a minimum of 3 though), just remember the more supports you have, the less room you have for the plant.

Step 4: Starting the Starting Point (even They Have to Start Somewhere)

Now we need to start where the "basket" or "net" will begin. This area will be where you would Ideally like to have the Pot rim to start.

So, Hold up your ring with supports, and determine where you want it to start. I chose mine about where the edge of my desk was near the bottom of the picture.
One by one, go to each support and tie another knot at the level where you want to start the weave. Try to keep them somewhat at the same level or length.

• Tip... When tying this knot, it's a good idea to try to keep the rope between the upper and lower knots even so there is no "bulging" in the supports. Keep in mind, this tip is only for aesthetic reasons, and generally will not effect the functionality of the hanger.

Getting a knot in several different pieces of string in the same place is difficult. I had to "re-do" some of my knots a few times. The technique that I found to work the best is, Pinch the "inside" portion of the rope where you want the not, keeping exactly where you want the knot at the edge of your index and thumb. Using your free hand, loop and make a loose basic knot in the rope. Now, with your "free" hand, lightly pinch the rope so your fingers "hold the knot in place"and use your middle, ring, and little fingers to pull the slack out. I'm trying to upload a movie of it to better describe it, since I know I'm probably confusing people.

** An Even Better tip: (all of you thank Zorra578 for this one!)
And thus spoke Zorra578" A tip for placing a knot exactly where you want it is a tip learned in beadweaving very early on and also how they knot the string so perfectly with pearls.

Slip a needle or a similar thin object into the knot before pulling it taught, then simply use the needle to move the knot along the string to the place you want it.'"

Once this is completed, you're most likely ready for Beverage #2, and ready to start "weaving" hopefully.

Step 5: The Weave

Ok, There are a few ways that you can go about doing this...

You could use beads instead of knots... Fully adjustable, however pain in butt to get it "just right" after inserting plant.
You could use knots all the way... Pretty much locking yourself into size etc, however best possible scenario as far as getting your "weave" perfectly shaped"
Or Use knots every other segment... which is what I did. (in theory it's the middle ground)

So, that being said, this is the theory of the weave.

Sort your supports left and right (odds one side, evens on the other) to make it easier to retain "even" placement of the supports. (picture 1)

ring
1 | | 2
3 | | 4
5 | | 6

Now, you want to work your way around the imaginary basket starting with #1. The easiest way that I was able to figure out (without using clamps, wire ties etc.) is make your knot segments or beads down the first strand. (picture 2)The distance between the grouping is up to you, the larger the the distance between the segments the larger pot diameter you can handle in the basket. (pictures 3+4). Starting with longer segments between knots, then gradually shortening them as you continue down will give a "tappered' effect to the basket.

Now you have knotted your first segment, start weaving the next one in line "between" the two sub strings, between the knots you just made (see pictures 5-7)You can either tie the two sub segments to itself (as I did) or use a bead, wire tie etc. Secure the segment by some means and continue down the line.

The pattern that I made was the following. Keep in mind each support has two sub strings. For this we will call each support by their support number, and their sub strings by A (left) and B (right)

1 3 5 6 4 2
AB AB AB AB AB AB "First knotted segment"
(2b)A BA BA BA BA BA B (1a) "weaved" segment"
AB AB AB AB AB AB "knotted segment"
(2b)A BA BA BA BA BA B (1a) "weaved segment"
AB AB AB AB AB AB "last knotted segment"

Step 6: Tie a Knot

So, hopefully you have made it through that last bit. and now you're ready to fit the pot.

Slip the empty pot into the weave and see exactly where you would like it to sit. (I didn't get a picture of this, because it was difficult to handle it, and the camera at the same time.)
Remove pot, and take all the strands tying a simple knot in the end where the bottom of the basket will be. now, you can keep it some what loose untill you get the positioning right, and if your pot is on the smaller side, you can leave it loose so you can adjust later when it needs a deeper / bigger pot.

Test how it rests in the basket by putting pot back in.

Some tweaking may be required based upon how your weaved segments sit. but don't worry it'll be ok, after all, the plant doesn't care about the aesthetics of the basket it's hanging in... it's most likely freaking out because it's not in the ground swinging high above it.

All kidding aside, I hope that some of you found this helpful or a fun little project for a rainy day, or possibly a gift for someone.


Once again thank you all for inspiring me to do my own instructable. I've always loved this site, and was really excited to do this experiment / project... or maybe it was just the beer. :)

Good luck with your projects, feel free to improve upon, or use this to create your own designs etc. I think next time I will experiment with number of strands and positioning of knots etc.