Finger-Loop Braided Bracelets

Here’s another thing I forgot to post – the finger-loop braided bracelets we made at AHG camp in March. Does anyone remember these? Maybe from seventh grade summer camp? You hook five loops onto your fingers, grab them back and forth in a certain order, and end up with a cord-like braided bracelet, like the orangish one shown in the photo below.

I went online to find some info to help me brush up on the technique and hit paydirt at loopbraider.com. Amazing braider, Ingrid, has loads of tutorials and pictures and samples and tips and and and.

After poking around there a little, I found that with one simple adjustment (grab “over” instead of “through” on one side), I could make a flat braid (bluish one in the middle below) instead of a thicker cord-like braid (orangish one at left).

And I also found out that using seven strands isn’t much for difficult than using five (resulting in the wider multi-colored braid in the photo above, far right). Ingrid does braids with more than a dozen loops! Haven’t tried that yet, but I am inspired to.

What I did try though is using something other than embroidery floss. I wondered if strips of knit fabric could make a chunkier bracelet. An old T-shirt was soon sacrificed to the experiment.

Result? Too chunky (in my opinion) for a bracelet, but wonderful (after I used longer strips) as a headband.

I just need to get off  my duff and finish up the ends properly. Right now, they’re just a mess of straggly ends attached together with about a dozen safety pins! But I can’t decide if I want to just sew a patch of fabric over that whole mess and hope that the natural stretch of the fabric and braid is enough for comfortable putting on and wearing, or if I should sew a strip of fabric to each end so it can be tied…

Decisions, decisions. (I hate ‘em.)

So now, if you have a bit of time, go lose yourself in Ingrid’s loopbraider.com tutorials, dig out some floss, and make some bracelets for your favorite kid/tween/teenager. Or yourself. : )