Friendship Bracelet Tutorial

Today we are going to learn how to make these traditional tied friendship bracelets.

Food Allergy Awareness Friendship Bracelet Project

Making these Friendship Bracelets was actually a homework assignment for Fairy. It didn’t dawn on me that I should blog about it until after we had completed several of these bracelets. When I grabbed my camera, Fairy paused in her tying a friendship bracelet, without looking up she asked if she should hold still for a few shots. LOL… the life of a blogger’s child.

The kids and I participate in a homeschool co-op once a week. The kids have fun taking some of their elective classes with their friends. Some of the classes that the kids are taking this year include Art, Music, Science Fair, Botony, Mapping the World by Heart, Books are Like Puzzles, and Fairy’s favorite class, Mini-Med School. The Mini-Med School class covers topics in anatomy and health. Each semester they have been assigned a community awareness project; this semester’s assignment was Food Allergy Awareness.

Fairy wasn’t given any guidelines other than the project should include the color teal (which is the Food Allergy Awareness ribbon color) and that a poster would be the bare minimum allowed, but the teacher would prefer something more creative. Fairy wanted tomake something that she could hand out to everyone in the class. We decided to make teal Friendship Bracelets, since I had all the materials on hand for this project and we could turn out a bunch very quickly (having only three days to complete the project by the time she told me about it). And I must say, I was surprised when I realized that I have never taught my girls how to make these traditional Friendship Bracelets before now. Of course, now that they have learned how to make them, I have them all over the house. 😉

 

Friendship Bracelet Materials

• Embroidery Floss in a minimum of two colors
• Safety pin or tight clip
• Scissors

 

Friendship Bracelet Directions

I will explain how to make a simple 4 stranded, two color Friendship Bracelet. You can use these basic directions to make more elaborate, wider bracelets.

Choose two or more colors of embroidery floss. You will need a minimum of 4 strands, so in our case 2 strands of each color. We chose a teal (for food allergy awareness) and similar secondary color.

Size the bracelet by wrapping the floss around your wrist 4 times. One time for each strand in your friendship bracelet. If you are making a wider bracelet, you will need to wrap additional times to start with longer strands.

Cut the strands and tie a knot at one end leaving about 1.5″ of tail.

Use a strong clip or a safety pin to attach the floss to the knee of your pants. You want the knot to be just below the clip. If you are not wearing long pants you can use a strong piece of tape to tape the floss to a table top instead.

Arrange the threads in the order you would like your stripes to appear.

Pick up the thread on the outside left. This will be your first tying color.

Pick up the second thread on the left. This will be your first base thread. Hold this thread taunt. I find it works well for me to hold the base thread in my left hand, so my right hand is free to manipulate the tying thread.

Wrap the tying thread over the top of the base thread and then pull the tail end up through the middle. This makes the loop for your first knot. Tighten the knot by sliding it all the way down to the clip. Be careful to hold the base thread taught and slide only the tying color or the knot can switch colors.

Repeat so that you have tied two knots on your first base thread.

Hold the tying thread up. Set the base thread down to your left, and then pick up the next base thread which in our case is the middle one. Tie two knots and continue to the next thread.

Repeat until you have tied two knots in each base thread. Set down the tying thread on the right hand side. It will now be the last base thread. You have now completed your first row.

Pick up the thread on the far left. This is your new tying thread. Tie two knots across all of the base threads, just as you did in the first row.

Continue tying rows until the bracelet wraps around your wrist. Finish by tying all strands into a big knot at the end of the bracelet to match the knot from the beginning. Trim the tails to about 1″ long.

Tie onto your wrist with a square knot. If you will need to remove the bracelet, make sure you tie it loose enough so that you can slip it off of your hand.

 

Food Allergy Awareness

To finish off her project, Fairy printed off these food allergy awareness cards that included a list of the most common food allergies and a link to www.foodallergyawareness.org. We punched a hole in the top corner and attached a bracelet to each one. She handed them out in her class.

Food Allergies pose a potentially life threatening risk to 1 in 13 children in the United States. If you would like more information on Food Allergies, we encourage you to visit the F.A.R.E. (Food Allergy Research and Education) site or FAACT (Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Connection Team).