Did you ever wonder how people make those tiny bows that are all the same size? And they all look exactly the same too! Well.... here is how it is done. - the easy way.
I use what used to be known as an 'Afro Pick'. Mine is made with a plastic handle that is split in two and the handle folds up and acts as a protective cover when the pick is not being used. The actual 'pick' part is made of a number of steel rods. I hope you can figure out what I am talking about by looking at the drawings below.
These are rather difficult to find these days - at least here in Canada where I live. I can find the type with plastic teeth, but you really need the metal teeth. There are a couple of things that you can use which will do the same job, but not nearly so easily as the Pick.
Here is the URL for a firm which sells exactly the right metal picks. Either the one with the black handle or the one with the red and green handle will do the job. http://www.metalafropicks.com/ You can use the pick which does not have the folding handle, but believe me, the folding handle is what you want.
Or..... You can take a small rectangle of wood and drive long finishing (small head) nails into it then cut off the heads of the nails and sand/emery them smooth. You need a rather larger piece of wood then you would think because you need something to hold on to while making the bow.
Sue Atkinson, Sunday Dolls, England, discovered a novel way to make a bowmaker. She used a piece of corrugated cardboard and slipped double-ended knitting needles into the grooves. You need to cut the cardboard about 2" shorter than the needles. That way you can use masking tape at the bottom to keep the needles from slipping out.
I have been using the same Bowmaker (Afro Pick) for years and have pulled out some of the rods so that I have different size spaces between them, to make different size bows. But it is certainly not necessary to pull out rods. It works fine with all of them left in.
Soooo here we go.....
With the handle of the bowmaker held between your knees, leaving both hands free, decide on the size of the bow you want to make. Wrap the ribbon around as many bars as necessary to make that size. Tiny bows - two adjacent bars; regular bows - second and fourth bars; larger bows, skip two, three or four bars.
TO MAKE THE BOW
Leave about a 4" end. Start wrapping to the left if you are right-handed. Follow the diagrams above.
Bring the two ends together and tie a single knot, fairly tightly, as close to the centre of the bow as possible, then slip the bow off the bars. Centre the knot and finish tightening. Note that this knot will not remain in the centre of the bow and the whole thing will fall apart unless you use a dot of glue at the back to hold it in place. Trim the ends of the ribbon.
For all but the smallest bows, I wrap the ribbon twice around the bars before going to the back to start forming the knot. For a large bow I will wrap three of four times. When the glue on the knot is firm, if you have wrapped more than once you can spread the bow.
Have fun! But please remember that these tutorials, photos, instructions and patterns are copyright, and are not to be used as a tutorial of your own. This means that you may not copy or post this tutorial to your own website, or print it out and sell it, or distribute it as your own.
