How to Tie a Perfect Hair Bow
- 1). Cut one 5-inch piece from the yard of ribbon. This leaves you with one piece 31 inches long and one piece 5 inches long. Set the shorter piece aside.
- 2). Hold your right hand in front of you with the palm facing you and fingers together. Take the longer piece of ribbon and lay the end in the center of your right palm with the right side outward. Guide the ribbon to the right and clamp it with your thumb so that you are holding the ribbon with a piece a few inches long sticking up over your palm and the rest falling free behind your hand.
- 3). Bring the long end of the ribbon around the back of your hand and loop it twice around your hand so that you have two complete circles around your hand. Be sure not to twist the ribbon at all, it needs to lay flat against your hand with the right side outward.
- 4). Pinch the layers of ribbon together with your free hand and lift the loops carefully off your fingers. Bring the point where the tails of the ribbon cross together with the opposite point of the loops. Adjust if necessary to make the loops even on both sides of where you have them pinched together.
- 5). Bring a threaded needle up from the back of the center pinch of the ribbon and through the midpoint of where the ribbons cross. Use your fingers to pleat the ribbon into an accordion shape so that the bow fans out and then wrap the thread around the pleated middle a few times to hold it in place. Pass the needle twice through the pleats and tie off the thread.
- 6). Take the 5-inch length of ribbon and tie a single knot in the center. Pull the knot tight and wrap it around the center of the bow. Adjust until it looks right to you, then wrap the tails around to the back of the bow. Trim the central wrap if necessary and either stitch or glue it closed at the back of the bow.
- 7). Trim the tails of your bow either short enough to hide behind the loops, or cut them off evenly and let them hang below the bow. Use glue or your needle and thread to attach your bow to a barrette, hair elastic or headband.
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