Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Knotted Friendship Bracelets


The older girls' (ages 11 and 13) friend K (age 12) taught us a new technique for making friendship bracelets, while visiting here last week.  You can never have too many different types of friendship bracelets :)


K wasn't sure where the method originated from, she learned it from a friend, herself.  But, it's nice and easy, and the girls have really been having fun with it. To try for yourself, just start out with two pieces of multi-strand embroidery floss, about a foot long (or longer if you want to be on the safe side).


Tie them together at one end.


Have a friend hold the knotted end...


...while you begin to knot one piece of string around the other...


...by looping it around...


...over, and through...


...and pulling it tight into a knot.


Keep making knots until you have an inch, or so of knots of one color in a row, and then switch to tying the second string around the first...


...repeating, until you have a long enough pattern of knotted segments to tie around your friend's wrist.


You can make a chunkier version, or add more colors, by adding more strings.  We made a bracelet in primary colors...


...using two strings of each color...


...by tying the two yellow strings around the four (red and blue) for a while...


...then switching to tying the red around the others, and so on.


I think that is really the appeal of this method of bracelet making for the girls, the pattern is so adaptable, and easy to vary, it leaves a lot of room for individual creativity.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

4 comments:

Phyllis said...

Those are pretty. Katie was interested in making them when she was about that age, but it has faded now, and the boys are not interested. I guess I will have to wait for grand-daughters.

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

Looks terribly tricky to me, but I am sure daughter will be a pro once she is older. I vaguely remember doing something like this myself when I was 10-12.

Ticia said...

Wait a second that might be the kind I learned as a kid and attempted to duplicate a little while ago and failed miserably.

Apparently in the 20 or so years since I first did it I've lost all of the skill.

Anonymous said...

Showing this to my girls right now! Thanks:)