At LadyJane's request, I decided to post a tutorial on how to make bows. Once you get the basic idea down, they're pretty easy, and super versatile. For this tutorial I used some fabric scraps I had from a dress I'm altering, and I went ahead and made 2 styles of bows.
Personally, I've been hand sewing most of my bows lately, but I've also hot glued bows before if you don't have the patience to sew them by hand. However, you don't get the flexibility of being able to make them bend how you want them that way, b/c the glue makes the centers stiff.
I might also do a tutorial later on how to make ribbon bow headbands (my friend Lizzy calls mine my alice headband) but for now we'll just focus on fabric bows.
Ok, so first you'll need two pieces of fabric. One is going to be your bow, and one is going to be the center of your bow. It doesn't matter what dimensions you use, because it's all personal preferance and how big you want it. But, obviously the part for the bow will be bigger than the part for the center. Anyway.
The first thing you'll do is fold the larger piece of fabric long ways. The parts you fold in don't have to overlap, but for larger bows it helps keep the sides from sticking up funny. For smaller bows where you aren't working with as much fabric, this usually isn't an issue. However, it is a lot harder to hold it down that way.
Next you fold the sides in like a burrito. These probably should overlap a little, or at least touch in the middle. This will make it easier to sew up.
Now what your fabric will look like this:
Sew your fabric up. To make your bow more even, sew it like this:
It should look like this when you're done sewing
Front with 2 stitches:
Back with 1 stitch:
Then you just pull the thread to make it tight. Your bow will look like this:
Next I like to wrap the thread around a few times and then push it through the center before knotting it. You don't have to, but it's just something I do:
Next take your center fabric. You're going to fold it longways just like with the first step for the bow:
Wrap it around the bow, and resize it to preferance:
Next, hold it around the bow and then cut off the ends as needed:
Fold the ends under to create a cleaner look:
Whip Stitch the back together:
TADA! You have a bow!
Now, alternately, you may not want to krinkle center to your bow. If you want a chunky bow instead, you can make it like this:
The first several steps are the same. You just down pull it tight in the middle:
Wrap the center around your bow, and let it pull the fabric backwards. This will give it a kind of fat, chunky look:
Finish your bow as usual.
The finished products!!
I hope this helps you all! Let me know if you have any questions!
Handmade Hair Bow tutorial (Massive amount of photos) -
01-27-2008, 07:56 AM
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