Tutorial – How to Make a Floral Bow
My experience has taught me that anything purchased in a florist shop is expensive and floral bows are no exception. Why pay retail prices when they are so easy to make?
I use floral bows for hand made wreaths, garlands and also on all of my special Christmas gifts. There are so many lovely varieties of floral ribbon available now. I just keep my eye open for sales – after any holiday is great for this. Just put them aside for next year.
For this bow, I found some lovely blue ribbon in the marked down bin at Micheal’s craft store for $1. Try buying a hand made floral bow for that at a florist!
Just follow these tips and you will be a professional bow maker in no time at all.
1. The first step is to buy the right kind of ribbon. I use wire rimmed ribbon for all my floral bows. You can make it with any type of ribbon but wire rimmed will hold the bow shape better and can be stored away for another year.
Before you start, cut off about 10 inches of one end.2. Make one loop and pinch it tightly. (if your ribbon is not the same on both sides, at this point you should give it one twist so the correct color shows on the front. Mine was fine so I could skip this step.) I had a 1 1/4″ wide ribbon, so I made my loops using about 8 inches of ribbon. Wider ribbon could have longer loops.3. Do the same on with another loop. Be sure they are about the same size.4. Keep adding loops until you have at least four on each side. The more looks you have, the fuller your bow will be.5. I continued making loops until I had about 14 inches left at the end. 6. Bring the loose end round the bow and make a smaller loop. This will hide the center of the bow where you tie it at the end.7. Take the piece that is left at the end and bring it around to the back and then through the small front loop.8. Pull the loop through so that it ends up on the front left side.9. Now pull the loose end down slightly so that you have two ends for your bow.10. Keep holding your bow with one hand and pick up the piece that you cut off before you started.11. Slip this under the back of the small loop that you made in step 6 and wrap it round the whole center of the bow that is inside the small loop.12. Take the small piece of ribbon around to the back of the bow and tie it very tightly.13. You will now have a bow that looks something like the picture above.14. Now fluff up the loops and middle loop so that the bow has a nice shape. You can trim the ends of the two loose ties. I normally cut them diagonally.
That is all there is to it. Once you get used to making floral bows, you will get very fast at it. I made mine in about 3 minutes and that includes taking the photos!
I used this bow on my DIY hydrangea wreath. You can see that tutorial here.
Have you made floral bows before? How do you use them?