Pretty Pretty Bows

I want you guys to know something about my latest crafting adventure.  It was not easy.  It actually took a lot more brain power than most of my projects.  HOWEVER – take it as a testament to how much I love all of you readers that I persevered through the challenges and ultimately prevailed to bring you… TA DA!  Felty gift bow thingies.  I probably need to work on a title for this sucker but we’ll leave it for now.

Sometimes I browse around on crafting sites and blogs wishing I could buy everything I see!  Lately I’ve been seeing tons of felt flowers and bows popping up that I absolutely love to today I sat down with nothing but determination and some craft supplies to figure out how to make some gift bows out of felt.  I’m going to try to consolidate my trial and error and bring to you, my dear wonderful readers, nothing but felt bow win.

Start out with a few blue felt strips about 4 1/2 inches long.  I cut four but only used three.

Next, sew the three strips into circles.  In the picture, I have an extra little loop that I didn’t end up using because it was too small so disregard it, but we’ll come back to the concept a little later.

Fold the circles so that the middle portion is flat and stitch them together.  Stagger them so that the ends peek through each other.  When making your stitches, you don’t need to make a ton of stitches because it will hold together pretty easily.  Don’t worry too much about “stitching outside the lines” because you’ll cover the stitches up later!

Cut another three strips, this time just about 6 inches each.  I cut the three at slightly different lengths, the shortest being 6 inches.  Each one was just a tad bigger than the last because I figured it would take just a little more fabric to wrap around the bow as it got bigger.

Again, sew these into circles, lay them flat, and sew them into the bow.  Stagger them the same way you staggered the first three circles.

The last step is to sew a little loop in the top if the bow.  It finishes the bow and acts as a coverup for all of the ugly stitches you’ve inevitably made throughout.  Stitch one end of the felt into the bow first and then loop it around and make another few stitches to hold it all together.

There are loads of things you could do with this from here – add it to a headband or a safety pin oooor whatever the heck else you feel like doing with it.

Heidi