How to Weave Ojo de Dios
In our house, weaving Ojo de Dios (also known as God’s Eye) are a fun summer pastime. I actually first made these as an adult, with my daughter’s 3rd grade Girl Scout troop many years ago, and I’ve love their graphic simplicity ever since. They are easy to make, quick to learn, and meditative to weave. They are certainly pretty in their simplest form, but over the years we’ve added some simple customizations into ours that I’ll share below. Grab some scrap yarn… or twine…. or Para cord …or fabric, a few sticks from the yard, something icy to drink, and start weaving!
How to Make Ojo de Dios
Materials:
2 sticks or twigs roughly the same length. In a pinch, you can use craft sticks.
Scrap yarn, or one of the other examples I show below:
scrap fabric torn into strips measuring about 1/2” wide and knotted together end to end
nylon twine from the hardware store
suede lacing
paracord
Optional materials: clear sequins, yarn needle
To Make a basic Ojo de Dios:
Cross the 2 sticks at their center points, and wrap the yarn around the center and tie a square knot. This doesn’t need to be a tight or pretty knot; you’re just anchoring the yarn around the sticks.
You will wrap the yarn around the Ojo in a clockwise direction. Starting at the 3 o’clock stick, then going to the 6 o-clock stick, then 9 o-clock, and so on.
Wrap the yarn around each individual stick by bringing the yarn over the stick, then wrapping around the back and coming back up between the stick you’re wrapping and the stick you just wrapped. Bring the yarn back over the current stick, and onward to the next stick, and repeat.
When you need to add on a new length of fabric or thread to the wrapping length, just tie the two ends together with a square knot. I never mind if these ends show, but you can coax them to the back of the Ojo if you prefer to hide them.
When finished with your weaving, just tie the end around one of the sticks.
Additional ideas
Sew accent stripes right onto the woven area. Use a yarn needle to sew between the strands of yarn in a contrast color. Loosely tie this yarn off on the back with a knot.
Add tiny sequins to the front of the Ojo using a needle and thread. I used clear sequins and these look so magical in the sunlight.
These Ojos were made using the self-striping yarn you can often find for knitting socks. Makes a fun pattern without needing to switch colors and knot off ends, just keep on weaving and watch the pattern emerge!
I found twine in fun colors at our local hardware store and it makes a fun pattern with a shiny effect to the weaving.
Leather cording makes a nice mat effect.
The fabric Ojo, above, is one of my favorites. Simply tear approximately 1/2” wide strips (do this by cutting a small snip into your fabric selvedge and rip the fabric from selvedge to selvedge). Tie the lengths of fabric end to end with a square knot, and weave them. The frayed ends make this one really fun.
