Fishtail Friendship Bracelets

Part of our VBS Program, Blast to the Past is to make friendship bracelets.  I must have missed how to make them when I was a kid.  I took out a couple books from the library.  Reading through them actually made my  heart race.  The kids have approximately 20 - 25 minutes per class and these look so complicated.   Plus our age range is from kids going into Kindergarten through 8th grade.  There is no way a little 5 year old would be able to understand how to make these kinds of knots and patterns.

I have seriously been stressing about this for weeks!  I have been searching high and low on Pinterest when finally a Fishtail style came up.  I have been bringing my bag of yarn, embroidery floss, tools, measuring tape, clipboard to so many places so I could force myself to do them.

Well finally Wednesday I brought it to church since Miss V has tutoring and we didn't have Alpha.  So while she was in the classroom, I pulled up the pin and combined it with some stuff from one of the books.

Supplies needed:

5+ different colors of embroidery floss (cut to 40 inches)

scissors

tape or binder clip (something to hold it in place while you work on it)

Fold the group of floss in half and make a loop at the top.

Then sort out the colors dividing them into two sides.

So each side had two strands of yellow, two strands of purple and one strand of white.

Attach the loop under the metal part of the clipboard, or you may tape it to a table.  I used my clipboard.

Start with the far left strand and cross over one strand to the right side.  Then take the far right strand and and cross it over to the left side.

Keep going until you reach your desired length.  What I noticed was that it was a bit loose, so every few times, I would take the left side strands and pull them a bit tighter and do the same with the right side.

Then make a knot at the end. I then just braided the end and you can knot the end to the loop.

It was hard getting a close up, the lighting wherever I went just wouldn't work.  These just happen to be Miss V's school colors.

I finished that one in about 35 minutes and decided to make one with the VBS colors.

The second one went much faster and I love all the bright colors.  I also knotted it at the end and separated the strands into two and braided them and made small knots at the end so you can easily knot them through the loop.