Pentecost Craft Ideas - Fire Tassel Wall Hanging

This year, Pentecost is celebrated on Sunday 20th May. It's the time of year we celebrate the Holy Spirit descending on the apostles after Jesus has ascended to be with His Father in heaven, and is usually the seventh Sunday after Easter, or the Sunday after Ascension Sunday.

The easiest way to learn more about that first Pentecost is to turn to Acts chapter 2 and read about it!

"When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them." - Acts 2:1-4

Lots of churches celebrate this Sunday with all-age services or Messy Church services, or they might have a bring and share meal together after church.

Typically, it can be quite difficult to find contemporary craft activities and decorative DIYs for your home that have a Pentecost theme, so we thought we'd do a mini series of craft ideas that you can do with your children on Saturday or Sunday, or integrate into your all age Pentecost service.

- Yarn in your choice of colours. We used these three shades of Drops Eskimo (via Wool Warehouse): orange, red, and yellow.

- A piece of card for making your tassels

- A pair of scissors

- A piece of wooden dowelling with holes drilled into each end (for your hanging string)

- A length of twine or string for hanging

Because you're making a number of tassels, you'll need to count the number of times you're winding the yarn around the cardboard so that they all end up a consistent size.

The yarn we used is quite chunky, and we wanted out tassels to be quite full, so we wound our yarn around the cardboard 50 times for each tassel.

Once you've wound your yarn, you'll need to tie it all together at the top so that the loops stay together when you slide the cardboard out. Leave a long length of yarn when you tie this top bit as that will be the length you attach to the wooden dowel to get the hanging effect.

Once it's tied together safely, remove the piece of cardboard so you can tie the tassel about an inch from the top (I always thing this bit looks a bit octopus-y!). You'll need to use a separate piece of yarn, and wrap it around 4-5 times to get a nice secure finish.

Now that's done, you can cut the bottom of the loops at the longer end of your soon-to-be tassel, and trim it with your scissors so you have a nice neat finish.

You'll need to repeat this process for as many tassels as you need. We went with five chunkier tassels, and we think you could do this project from start to finish in around 20-30 minutes. You could make a mini version with just three tassels as a Pentecost craft for kids in your church, and it would only take around 10-15 minutes.

Once you've made your tassels, you should have five (or however many you've chosen) nice neat tassels, each with a long length of yarn at the top ready for tying to your wooden dowel.

The final step is tying it all together!

Decide how you'd like your tassels to hang - we went with V-shape with the longest tassel in the middle, but you could also do an asymmetric finish starting lower at one side and ending higher up at the other.

Tie them to your wooden dowel in the order you'd like them to hang, and then when you're happy with the length and placement, double tie a knot and trim the excess from the loose (non-tassel) end -- careful you don't accidentally cut your tassel off though!

The finishing touch is adding a piece of twine or yarn to the holes in your dowel so you can hang it up.

* Top Tip: Only want it to be in a particular space for a few days? Use a commando hook!

For other DIY ideas, including some (messy but fun) Pentecost Marshmallow Pops, check out our DIY section on the blog.