These cute little apples just fell from our tree, or so we like to think! They’re super easy to craft and make a fun decoration for my Fall kitchen.
Supplies for Yarn Apples:
- craft yarn – red, green, or yellow (the cheap yarn will do, $2 a skein)
- pipe cleaners (or chenille stems) – brown and green
- piece of cardboard – 2 in x 5 in
First find a piece of cardboard to help you with the winding. I tore off a piece from a box we had lying around. If you want a smaller apple, use a piece of cardboard that is 2 inches thick. Or if you want it a little larger, go 3 inches. I also bend my piece of cardboard in half a bit, just so it’s easier to take the yarn off when it’s done being wrapped.
Take your yarn color of choice and start wrapping it around your cardboard. We did ours almost 100 times around, so keep on winding!! Although I did wrap one apple only 80 times, and it looked just as good. The more you wrap, the thicker and tighter the apple looks. When you’re done winding, then just cut your string off, letting it hang in place. It will get tucked away later.
Cut your brown piece of pipe cleaner in half and slip one through your winded up yarn. This is where the bent in half card board piece comes in handy. If your cardboard is bent, it’s easier to slip the pipe cleaner through. Then twist up the end together, forming a stem for the top of the apple.
You now put the other cut half brown pipe cleaner through again and twist it up on the opposite end of the yarn, creating the round apple and looking like the little bottom end of an apple. Twist it up a ways, then cut off the pipe cleaner with scissors fairly close to the yarn and bend that end of wire in.
You can be done here or add a little leaf to the apple. With a 2 inch piece of green pipe cleaner, slip it under the top brown stem. Then bend in each half to look like 2 little leaves.
You’re done. Now these little cute apples are ready for display. We’re making a set of 8 for my daughters preschool as they’re talking about apples this week!
Written by Marie LeBaron
Marie LeBaron is the founder and managing editor of Make and Takes. Always having a love of crafts, she enjoys getting messy with glue and glitter. There’s always some sort of project going on, her kitchen counter is often cluttered with crafts. When she’s not crafting and creating with her kids, she loves to run, read, and blog! Read other posts by Marie
{ 54 comments… read them below or add one }
Those are just adorable!! Great idea!
My kids are going to LUV this!!! LOVE it!!!!
Adorable! My daughter’s preschool is talking about the letter “A” this week. I think we’ll make a set for her class! Thanks for the idea.
Too cute! LOVE this!
This is such a cute idea! Now I want to do an apple unit right now just so that I can have these sitting on our table. lol
cute! i’m going to use orange yarn and make pumpkins for my son’s 6th birthday party next month. :)
Tracey – Oh, yes! Pumpkins are already on there way here too!! Even some ornaments for Christmas! I love YARN!
Soooo cute! Now I’m thinking I could make pumpkins too! :)
aww, cute! they would be good for this week; my daughter’s doing letter “A” in school too! thanks!
love it! could even do different colors for several different fruits! adding this to our to do list!
So Cute. You could make lots of round fruits and veggies. This would be a cute gift topper for a teacher!
Sarah – I love this idea for a gift topper! Great thinking!
My daughter and I (4 years old) just made these with some yarn I have had laying around for years. It was quick and simple and we both had fun. Very cute, lots of fun color options to think of!
Argh! Those are darling! I love the gift topper idea, and lucky me- I’m going to a birthday tonight! Thanks so much, I’ll be linking.
So cute! I was thinking about the pumpkin idea too.
Thanks as always for all the fun ideas! ;o)
So. Darling.
Grrr… my classroom was doing apples last week!!! This would have been perfect!! They are sooo cute.
What a darling idea for table decorations. I like that someone suggested to make pumpkins too. I’m including this idea on my website.
How cute! I think I will get some orange yarn and make some large pumpkins!!
What a great idea! I’ve bookmarked it! Thank you so much for sharing!
I love these! Definitely linking to this on my website. Think of the cute little pumpkins you could make with this project!
Oh my! These are so darn cute! I’ll definitely have to try it out with my kids. Thanks for the great idea.
These are darling. They remind me of some of the yarn crafts I did as a child with my grandmother. I don’t have red yarn in my stash so we’ll be doing pumpkins first. Thanks for sharing!
I was thinking pumpkins too – very cute idea.
Just used this tutorial and ORANGE yarn, to make PUMPKINS!! Thanks for the AWESOME idea… I am posting about it tomorrow on my blog. Thanks Again!
SO CUTE!!
I love these! Perfect for our fall decorating.
Thanks so much, this is so something I can do with my 4 year old daughter for her class!
Yay, this is on Ohdeedoh! http://www.ohdeedoh.com/ohdeedoh/how-to/apple-yarn-favors-096237#comments
could these also be done with orange yarn and called pumpkins? perhaps a cute party favor for the pumpkin-themed baby shower I’m throwing next month…cute! and maybe even I could manage these.
I’m always in love with easy crafts where I can use up leftovers from other projects to make something truly cute. Thanks for this idea for Autumn. I’m picturing these scattered around bringing color everywhere!
Awesome and so cute. I think we’ll try to make pumpkins this way.
Cheers
M
Love it! Looks like a great project for this afternoon!
I made the pumpkins and posted them on my blog and linked back to you. They turned out very cute.
http://howtodosomething.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-to-make-yarn-pumpkin.html
Love your idea. just a few things to add to it if you dont mind. You could do three white ones and strack them for a snowman. AYou can use felt to make face, same if you wanted to make a jack_or_lantern.Also, if you lightly coat a styrafoam ball with gklue you can cover it in yarn and have some cool things too. Plus, use different colors, kije maybe gold or silver and make soft ornamrnts for a Xmas tre. You can alzo make a few for cat toys. If you want them to be a bit fuller, lightly stuff them with kleenex or paper towels..Wow, your idea inspired all of that..
Way.too.cute! I linked to this on my weekly roundup – post is under my name. Thanks for sharing!!
did this THIS morning with a group of daycare kiddos that i get to play with every week.. they turned out SO cute and sweet! .. thanks for the idea..and of course i linked you on my blog!
This is great!
We’re going to the apple orchard in two weeks.
I’ll introduce this to the children before hand.
That is so cute.I love doing little crafts like this.
We made these yesterday and love them! Can’t wait to make pumpkins next week!
Thanks!
Lisa
I might be a 12 year old boy but these yarn apples and pumpkins are just fun to make!!! I make them everyday when i get home just to relax me before i do my homework. You could really make some money off of these !!!!
Thanks for ideas and keep on thinking,
Austin Costner
These are genius! I love how simple the technique is. You should add this to Handmade Holidays at The Snail’s Trail.
I follow your tuto for making the apples for my Advent Wreath… thank you so much… http://cajahilos.blogspot.com/2009/12/adviento.html
These are neat! Do you think a group of 3 and 4 year olds would be able to do it as a preschool craft?
Maria – For these apples, I do think 3-4 year olds could do this. My daughter is 4 in the post and she made the one featured! It would require a little adult supervision, as they might need help after they’ve wrapped it to cut and add the pipe cleaner. But they could easily wrap the yarn and have fun doing it.
Let me know how it goes!
Do you think there’s a way to link them together and do snowmen?
We’re having a playdate at our house this weekend and this could be fun to do!
I’m sure there is a way you could link these yarn balls together to form a snowman. Just make the three balls as directed, but attach two together with more pipe cleaner, and the same for the third. They might be kind of wobbly, but still cute!
Too cute! LOVE this!Thank you$Emerencia.
HI Marie! I featured these today :) http://funfamilycrafts.com/yarn-apples/
Find out how we used these little apples
http://www.justforthefamily.com/7/post/2011/11/chrismas-advent.html
hi everyone … came across these and thought i’d share … what an amazing job she has done and they look even better in person !!!
http://www.etsy.com/listing/93410704/handmade-yarn-pumpkin-favors-or
I’m an English teacher in Korea for kindergarden kids (3-7 year olds), and needed a simple and quick craft for letter crafts (“A” is for apple). I’m so glad I found your site! They’re ridiculously addicting to make and so fun (I’ve made over a dozen, from pingpong ball to baseball size, and they’ve all turned out great)! Thank you for sharing this!
I do not know whether it’s just me or if everyone else experiencing problems with your blog. It appears as though some of the written text in your posts are running off the screen. Can somebody else please comment and let me know if this is happening to them too? This might be a problem with my web browser because I’ve had this happen previously. Cheers
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