How to make easy ribbon bow connector

Hey guys!

As I promised I will show you today how to make easy ribbon bow connector. There are other ways to make it and I've tried them but this technique is easier for me and much more durable.

What you will need:

ribbon
middle ribbon (usually smaller size)
scissors
thread (in matching colour with your ribbon)

First step:
Take your main ribbon and fold it in half inside out (meaning the "nice" side inside :)
Sew the ends. You don't have to be really neat here as you will not see this part when you finish :)

Trim the excess thread and turn the ribbon "nice" side out.

You should have something like this :)
The sewn part should be in the middle and this will be the back of the bow.

Now take the needle and put it through your ribbon several times
(I hope you can see it on the photo)

I usually do it twice, to connect both sewn ends.

Cut the excess thread and you should have the main shape of the bow :)

Now take the ribbon that will be the middle part of your bow and measure the lenght  of it, how loose or tight you'd like it to be.
My advice is, if you want this bow to be a deco or just a cabochon, then this part doesn't have to be too loose. If you want to add jump rings on the top and the bottom, and use this bow as a connector (meaning hang something on it) then you should make it a bit looser to be able to add jump rings.

Sew it just as you did with the main ribbon,but this time it has to be done properly because the bow will have to withstand the weight of whatever you want to hang on it. 
As you can see I added two jump rings and then sew the ends together. I did it like that because I used CLOSED jump rings. You can add them later if you're using OPEN jump rings. Closed ones are just safer as they won't open because of the weight of the charm etc.

Now take this small middle ribbon  and turn it inside out. I usually help myself with end of the brush :)
And this will be the test of how strong you have sewn this ribbon. If it will break, you should do it again with another piece. Then you will be sure that it won't break apart while wearing / using it :)








It all should look something like that now :)

Now I'd like to add that you don't have to use different ribbon for the middle. You can also use the same ribbon you used for the main part. If it's too thick, you can just fold it in half :)

Now the tricky part:

Gently fold the main ribbon and thread it through the middle part.

This part is optional but really useful :)

You can additionally sew the middle ribbon to the main one on the "back" side. Try to make it as least visible as possible. Couple of stitches would be OK, just to keep the middle part in place.

Now move the jump rings on the top and bottom and the end result should look something like this :)





I hope this little (but still long!) tutorial helped. I know this may sound  obvious, but I've tried couple different methods I found on Internet and they failed. First one was to use hot glue to join the middle ribbon to the main one. It failed because the ribbon was fraying and the glue was too thick and I was ending up with hard bit on the back. This solution was OK for phone/bag charms but not nice enough for jewellery as the glue would just scratch the body or catch the fabric on clothes.

Second method was to use double sided sticky tape. That worked but bows made this way wouldn't be strong enough to be used as connectors. They just wouldn't hold anything and the middle ribbon was fraying too...

Therefore simple sewing was the only option. Strong, cheap, quick and not messy (like with hot glue!) ^_^

I hope you enjoyed this micro tutorial!
And thank you for visiting my blog! :)