So, I thought I'd do a post on how I make my fabric bows. So many lovely mamas are always commenting on them and I started making them myself after buying some on etsy (for a ridiculous amount) because Lemon has got to have a bow in every color! I have never really been crafty but when I was pregnant I made a few projects for her nursery and now that she's here I find that I want to make her all kinds of cute things (bows, flowers, baby belts) because she can just rock them all like no other. So, I bought some fabric, fished out my glue gun and got to work. So, if you're interested, here's how I make them. And, if you don't have a girl, these can be bow ties for your baby bow too! (Oh and never mind our gross blanket that I craft on while watching TV. It covers our ottoman so that the dogs don't get our couches all furry. The blankets spend most of their time getting stained and dirty to then be removed when guests come over! Ha.)
1. Start with a square of fabric. This one is about 8x8 but you can use a bigger or smaller square depending on how big you want your bow to be.
2. Fold your square, like a hot dog (this is what I tell my students!), and glue it with hot glue.
3. Fold in the side of the rectangle that you made and glue those also.
4. Turn it over and pinch it in from the back. Put a small line of glue on the front, where it is pinched, and hold it there to dry. Do you see a bow starting to form?!
5. Turn it back over, to the back side and pinch again, putting another thin line of glue on the top where the top meets the middle and on the bottom where the bottom meets the middle.
6. This is what the front looks like after all the little gluing:
7. Now you have to make the middle of the bow. Take a strip of fabric and do the same, folding it over on itself, hot dog way again and gluing, to make a neat little strip.
8. Wrap your small strip around your bow and it's starting to look really cute!
9. I make all of my bows with these clips (from Amazon) so that I can attach them to an interchangeable headband now and then hopefully clip in Lemon's hair one day! Place clip on your strip so that when you fold the strip around the clip ends up centered on the back of your bow.
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10. Glue the clip to the fabric and then cut the middle of the bow strip so that you can glue it down too.
11. I like to add ribbon to the clip (these, also from Amazon) so that the bow looks finished. I just cut the ribbon, wrap it around the clip and glue with hot glue.
Finished! I even included smaller bows that I made so you can see that this technique works to make all different sizes. You can even put a ribbon in the middle of the tiny ones instead of a piece of fabric (and I haven't perfected getting my ribbon exactly straight on the clips before the glue dries or I burn my fingers).
And if you'd like to make your own interchangeable headband instead of buying a ton of them on etsy, like I did, and then realizing how easy they are to make, all you need is to buy are some fabric headbands like these (at CVS, Walgreens, Target, etc.):
Then you scrunch a bit of the headband, and wrap one of the grosgrain ribbons (link above) around it and glue it, just on the back, so that you can slide different barrettes and clips onto the ribbon that is wrapped around the headband If you want a skinnier headband, just buy skinnier ones, and if they are too big to fit around your baby's head, just cut them and re-glue, under the ribbon, so no one can see it. I spent so much money on etsy and then made some of these the other night, so easy and quick - so dumb I didn't do it before!
Enjoy! Tag me on Instagram (@allisonpants) if you make some of these for your babes so I can see all the cuteness!
awesome! Thanks!
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