So, it is December now, and Christmas is coming up on us fast. Which means that there's a lot of cool Christmas-like patterns to scope out!
This year, I'm making all of my gifts, since I don't have the money to purchase any, and I've been feverishly looking through patterns and tutorials to get ideas for fun stuff for my family and friends. It's so cool to see what people have thought up, and it's fun to tweak their ideas with tidbits from my imagination!
Anyway, I saw the tutorial for these bows on Becca's Ladyface Blog, and I just knew that I had to start making like... tons of these little guys. There's so much potential!
To make the bows themselves, I pretty much followed her tutorial to a T, so check out her site if you want to learn how to make them. For the orange Christmas bow, I just stuck a bobby pin through the back, just like she did.
For the green necklace, I played around a little more. I just sewed some jump rings to either edge, going underneath the bow's middle to hide the thread. Then I made a little string of matching beads on straight posts (normally used for earrings), and hooked everything up. The whole thing took maybe a half hour of work time. Longer because I played around with my bead colours a lot!
These are fantastic crafts for pretty much any season -- especially because crafts stores that sell fabric often have seasonal samples. I love to get the little 4-packs of seasonal fabrics and play with those! The range of fabric types can be played with, too! From flannel to satins to leathers, if you can sew it, you can use it!
One thing I would recommend is to be conscious of your fabric type when sewing these. Sure, the thin quilting fabrics used here will make a bow of nice size, but if you follow the tutorial for a thicker fabric without adjusting the amount of fabric you use, you could end up with a thick tiny bow that is hard to do anything with.
That said, adjusting your measurements will make bows of every size! Play around with it!
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| I decided to model this one, but the lighting is poor because it's in the living room... |
What will you use your bows for? Let me know below!
