how to tie a velvet bow

Hi there , Lindsay here , the Frugal Crafter today .

I'm gonna show you how to make a cute bow .

I'll get this stuff out of the way .

Um , out of velvet ribbon , which can be kind of difficult to work with .

Uh , last year we , um , decorated our porch and , um , I , we didn't have enough bows .

And so I thought , well , we gotta roll a ribbon .

I'm gonna make some of my own and they were the most hideous things that you ever wouldn't want to see .

Oh , my gosh , they were horrible .

I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong .

But then the other day , um , I taken , my son went to a , um , boy scout meeting and they were decorating wreaths for the wreath sale and asked for help and I volunteered and they showed me how to make a proper bow .

Um , so I'm gonna break it down for you too and , uh , we'll have , we'll all be able to make bows by the end of today .

So , what I have here is just a DVD case you can use a book or anything to measure out your ribbon with .

And so what you wanna do is have the tail towards the end just matched up with the end and then you're going to wrap around two whole loops and you're not counting that first tail as one of your loops .

So there we got two whole loops and we're going to cut it .

So we have a little bit of excess , like maybe um maybe a foot of extra material there , right ?

And there's nothing special about this .

This is actually pretty cheap uh um velvet ribbon and then you're gonna slide this off and lay it down on your table so that you've got the tail um on , it's on my uh my right .

And then you're gonna um kinda roll it a little bit .

So you have a longer tail and so the tail on the inside is about halfway in the middle and you're gonna pull that down .

So it's just hanging down .

Then you're gonna flip this whole deal over and you are gonna fold it in half like , so , all right , then you're gonna accordion fold a little bit , you're gonna fold this edge to you there and you're gonna fold this other edge away from you here .

I did flip it there just uh you know , stop it and rewind it if you need to .

All right .

And so then you're gonna hold it .

So you have the um no raw edges facing you .

Let me just OK .

So we have no rough edges facing us .

Now , you need a bit of wire which , um , you should really cut before you begin , but I always forget that part you need about a foot .

Um , and that just gives you a little extra , um , wire in case , you know , you want to tie it to something and then you're going to , um , wrap it around the center of your bow here and you're gonna twist the bow .

And one of the reasons I'm making this video , I mean , obviously I wanna help everybody make good bows , but I know I'm gonna forget how to do this .

So if I do this now on camera , then I'll be able to tell and you know , next month that I need to make 50 of these .

All right , then you're gonna take this , this piece here and you're gonna fold it over your wire , you're gonna stick two fingers in here and you're gonna fold it back back down again , then take whatever tail of your wire that is longer and wrap it around the front and that's gonna make a little button on the center of your bow .

See that nice and neat and tidy .

So pull that wire back around to the back and do some more twisting .

So you secure that .

So we're not tying a bow .

That's why it's so difficult .

I was always trying to tie a bow .

You really don't tie these .

All right .

And now we've got this tail here in the center that we're gonna pull down .

Nice and neat .

We're gonna take this , uh , front tie , which is really just the other side of our button and we're gonna pull that down .

We're gonna lift up that little button in the front that we made .

I probably shouldn't use .

Red boy .

Red is kind of hard to photograph .

I hope it's not , I hope it's clear .

You can see that really well .

Um , we're gonna pull our little tails down , make it nice and neat .

And now for the , um , for the loops here on the edge , you've got two loops , you've got an in a loop on the inside loop on the outside .

So just make sure you do the same thing to each side .

So if you're leaving the , uh , loop in front down , pull the middle loop up and you want to do that same thing on the other side and you're just kinda fluffing it and making it pretty and those folds that we made before we wired it that first time , kinda help it keep its shape .

So that's a kind of an important step there that we did that and just kind of fluff it mess a little bit .

Nobody's gonna be looking at it too close up .

You know , there's as well .

The lady that taught me how to make this bow at the boy scout meeting .

She's like , you know what people are gonna be driving by , no one's gonna stop and inspect your bow hanging on a wreath at the Boy Scout sale right now with our tails .

You just wanna line , hold them together and fold them in half .

And then we're just gonna , um , cut an angle .

We're gonna V notch .

There we go .

And there we have a lovely bow .

I might make this side a little bit shorter , but that would be cute on a wreath or a present or wherever and , um , make sure you practice this a few times .

So you don't forget how to do it .

If you do forget how to do it , I will keep this video up for your sake and mine so that we all can make pretty bows this holiday season .

I want to thank you so much for watching and until next time , Happy Crafting .