Giant God’s Eye Yarn Craft

God’s eyes are classic children’s craft and kids are sure to love this giant God’s eye yarn craft as well!

Classic God’s Eye craft

We learned how to make God’s eyes last year and when we revisited the idea this year, my kids went crazy making them. In one afternoon we had more than 25 God’s eyes made by my two older kids (ages 5 and 8)!

We turned some of those into a fun mobile to decorate our school room for summer. I just hung them from a string of yarn onto an embroidery hoop. Voila!

I love that my kids love making things, but sometimes the clutter of their creations becomes too much so I wanted to find a way to channel their creativity and new skills into a specific project. With summer solstice coming up this weekend, I got an idea to do a giant God’s eye that we could work on as a collaborative project.

All three of my kids, even my 3 year old ended up working on this project with me and loving it!

How to make a God’s Eye

Making a God’s eye is simple and the basic process is the same no matter what size your finished product will be.

A basic version uses two sticks and yarn. Your sticks can be craft sticks, sticks found in your yard, wooden dowels…whatever you have on hand! Here’s a quick video tutorial from Red Ted Art to show the process:

Once you learn the basic process, there are al lot of variations you can do to create different patterns and designs on your God’s eyes.

Here’s a fancy version my kids also love making:

Make a Giant God’s eye

Now that you know how to make a God’s eye, you can supersize the project with big sticks from your yard!

I sent the kids out to gather sticks that were about three feet long. You can do any size- the process will be the same. We decided to do ours with three sticks but you could do two, three, four sticks or even more.

I used a few big dabs of hot glue to secure the sticks at the center before we began.

 

For the yarn, we worked with colors of the sun in honor of the summer solstice, but choose your favorite coordinating colors. I like to mix and match textures so I looked for yarn in different weights and with some different textures. We also used some jute which added a nice natural touch. Get creative!

Tie the end of a ball of yarn onto the center of the sticks. Start by wrapping diagonally across the center a few times and then diagonally across the opposite direction to ensure the sticks are secure.

Once the sticks are secure, begin wrapping the sticks to create the basic God’s eye pattern. Wrap the yarn around a stick once, bringing the yarn over the frontside of the stick and then wrapping around the underside of the stick. Bring the yarn up and over an adjacent stick and use the same over-under wrapping technique. Continue this wrapping patten around all of your sticks to complete one layer.

Continue working in one color of yarn until you are happy with the size of that color block. Switch colors by tying the end of the first color to the end of your new color. Adjust the knot so that is can be tucked on the back side of the God’s eye.

Continue working around the sticks to add more yarn. You can stick with the basic pattern like we did or switch to a different pattern with any new color block.

Continue wrapping your God’s eye until you are a few inches from the end of the sticks. Tie off the yarn on one of the sticks and tuck the knot to the back. Finish the piece by tucking any loose threads to the back.

I thought it would be fun to add a few tassels to the end of our sticks. See how we make tassels here.

A Perfect Summer Solstice Craft

After a week of working on our giant God’s eye yarn craft, we were done- just in time for the summer solstice!

We’ll hang this in our school room but it would make a lovely party decoration for a summer solstice party too. This was such a fun project! If you try it, tag me over on Instagram– I’d love to see!