Tutorial for beginners

This Tutorial is wrote for total beginners, that didn't make any bracelet before. Making friendship bracelets takes a lot of patience, that's why everybody should start with striped bracelet. Read the 'Knots' tutorial before making your first bracelet. So the best starting point is to try out some striped bracelets to both sites and practice both forward and backward knots.

1) Every knot is made out of two knots, so basically it's a double-knot.
2) For every knot you need two strings of yarn, the front one is tied around the back one.
3) The knots need to be tied thoroughly, so they're not to loose.

- Embroidery floss
- Scissors
- Safety pin

So your first bracelet should definitely be a striped bracelet. You can do the striped bracelet with 6 or maybe 8 strings. This tutorial is for a bracelet from 8 strings.

Of course you can use as many strings as you'd like. Odd or even amount of strings can be used. It is possible to make a bracelet with two strings. what you get is something like a shoe-lace. It's not possible to make a bracelet from one string.

From each embroidery floss, cut one string. One string should be approx. 1 metre long. Once you'll be making bracelets with various patterns, you will need longer strings. When cutting your strings, cut them rather longer then shorter.
Tie your strings in one knot on the top and fasten it on your safety pin. Pin it to something you're going to be working. You can tie your bracelets on your knee, or maybe a pillow. Put your strings in an order like you want your stripes to be ordered.

First string in my bracelet is orange-pink, so orange-pink string will be our first 'working' string and the rest will be just back strings. So we start with this first string doing one forward knot. The orange-pink string starts as a left string and ends as a right string, that's why it's a forward knot. The forward knot is done like this: Take the orange-pink string in your right hand. The back light pink string that is second in order take to your left hand and stretch the string slightly. Put the orange-pink string over the light pink one from left to right and lace through the loop. You then tighten the loop and then make another loop and tighten that too to create the forward knot (which is basically a double knot to the right side).

Tie the bracelet downwards. Striped bracelets are usually tied downwards, either to the left or right, but it never goes upwards again. You have to tie it downwards straight from the first row as you see it in the pictures. If you'd do the bracelet with backward knots (to the left) you would go downwards from right to left.

Notice that every time you make a knot the 'working' string changes it's position. in the previous picture it was before the green-blue, and now it's after it.

With the main string, do knots over all of the back strings until you make a row.

This is how the row looks when it's finished. We made a knot with the orange-pink string over each of the back strings to create this row. The orange-pink string ended up as the last string and from now on it will be a back string, not the 'working' string.

For the next row, the main string will be light orange. we start exactly the same as with the orange-pink string. In this bracelet, we only use the forward knot.

We will finish the light pink row and start with the dark pink.

This is how the first eight rows look. We made one row with each colour and the next row will be tied with our first orange-pink string again.

We continue making rows with each colour until the bracelet is long enough. Then we make a normal ponytail on the end, untie the first big knot we made at the beginning, and made a second ponytail at the other side. cut the waste strings and tie the bracelet on your or your friends wrist.