Today I wanted to bring you a free Memorial Day craft tutorial. Memorial Day is in a week, so I wanted to bring you this tutorial early enough to have plenty of time to do it with your children.
Memorial Day is an important holiday to me. No it is not about barbecues and family get-togethers. It also frustrates me when people get it mixed up with Veteran’s Day. It’s not that I don’t celebrate all those who have chosen to wear a uniform for our country. But this is supposed to be a day specifically for those who have given the ultimate sacrifice…their lives.
Memorial Day is for those who died in service to our country. They lost their lives, their futures and their time on this earth with their families to keep us free. Most people who enter the military do not wish to die for their country, but know that is a risk. A risk they are willing to take. So we celebrate them. We remember them. We thank them.
Memorial Day Craft
So in thinking about Memorial Day and a craft that truly celebrates, remembers and thanks those soldiers who lost their lives in service to their country, I came up with this craft. Ultimately they gave up our lives so that we all have freedom. So what better way to honor those solders, but by creating a windchime to let freedom ring!
This craft uses the following items:
Craft bells-as many as you like, any type that you like.
1 foot long dowel rod or stick
Fishing line or thin string (skinny enough to go through the beads)
Large Red, white (or clear) and blue beads, any type
Paperclips/binder clips/quilting clips
2 small eye screws
This cute little windchime is simple and easy. You want to start with cutting a bunch of pieces of fishing line or string. The length of your beads will determine how long you want to make it. I chose noodle beads because I had an over abundance of them. I wanted to make my windchime about a foot long plus a little extra for tying, so I chose to make my pieces of string 2-2 1/2 foot long just to make sure I had plenty. With these things you can always cut off the excess at the end, but you can’t add it back. I chose white string because I was using clear beads for my white stripes in my flag
You will need to make 13 pieces of fishing line for the 13 stripes on the U.S. flag. I then added my clips about 6 inches down the string. This meant any beads I strung on the string could not fall through the end of the string. The clips are just acting as a stopper to keep your beads on the string. After that I set out making each string of my windchime. I wanted to make about the first 1/3 of the string blue. For the noodle beads this was only 4 beads as each one was about one inch in length. Then after that I put 8 red beads. At the the bottom I tied on a bell and then finished with some good knots.
I did this for the first 7 strings, but alternated every other string red versus white (or clear in my case) to simulate the stripes on the flag. This should leave you with 4 red strings and 3 white strings. Next you need 6 more strings and these strings you will keep solid red or solid white for the rest of the stripes, three of each. So that was a total of 12 beads per strand for me. Again I tied on a bell to the end of each strand.
Next I tied each strand to my dowel rod. I made sure to try to line the beads up as much as possible and I left a little open string at the top to allow the strings to swing in the wind. When I was done with all 13 strands, I took some extra string and tied it onto both ends to hang the wind chime. I had a couple small eyelet screws I chose to screw into the end of my dowel rod and tied the string to those.
And there you have it, our finished product. This is a cute little Memorial Day project you can do with your kids and hang outside a window or on your porch and every time you hear the bells it can remind you of freedom and the sacrifices those made to keep us free.
Let freedom ring!
Thanks for reading!
